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THE DRAMATIC ACTION 

AND MOTIVE OF 

KING JOHN 

3n Casap 



f> 



CLARA FRENCH, A. M. 



WITH A MEMORIAL SKETCH OF 
THE WRITER 



J 

CAMBRIDGE i- V#0 7 X 

Printed at t&e Htoetmiie lp)re0g 

1892 



TTl.818 



Copyright, 1892, 
By MARY E. W. FRENCH. 



The sun nor loiters nor speeds, 
The rivers run as they ran, 

Through clouds or through windy reeds 
All run as -when all began. 

Only Death turns at our cries: — 

Lo, the Hope we buried with sighs 

Alive in Death's eyes! 

Christina Rossetti. 



CLARA FRENCH 



CLARA FRENCH 



The life of Clara French held more of prom- 
ise than of fulfillment. Her nature was strong 
in patience, her force spent in serious and 
quiet preparation. Thus, when in the autumn 
of 1888 she was called to the higher and ce- 
lestial service, she had but just entered upon 
that vocation of teacher at Wellesley College 
to which she looked forward with loyal earnest- 
ness as the beginning of her life-work. She 
left behind her small record of obvious achieve- 
ment, or of definite lines of outward activity. 
Her activities were within her own spirit, her 
achievements rather in character than in deed. 
Of the inner workings of such a life as hers, 
little can be said. Its secrets are hidden with 
the mystery of that great underworld of latent 
forces which slowly, in darkness and silence, 



4 CLARA FRENCH 

work their way to self-expression. No one 
more than Clara French would dread any ap- 
proach to publicity ; and none whose lives 
were near her own could now seek to violate 
the noble reticence which set her apart from 
others by a peculiar dignity. Yet, for the sake 
of the many who honor her, it is fitting that 
one example of her genuine and scholarly work 
be preserved ; and such an example will tell 
its story better if prefaced by a few notes con- 
cerning her outward life and a few suggestions 
concerning the growth of the mind and spirit 
within. 

Clara French was born July 30, 1863, in 
Syracuse, New York. She was the only living 
daughter of John H. French, LL. D., honor- 
ably identified for many years with educational 
work of various kinds. Before she was four 
years old, the family removed to Albany, New 
York. When she was seven they went to Bur- 
lington, Vermont, where the rare beauty of 
lake and mountain sank deep into the child's 
nature, and gave her a feeling of home to 
which she returned with clinging affection of 
memory through all her later years. 



MEMORIAL SKETCH 5 

A friend writes about her as a little girl : 
" No child ever played with heartier enjoyment 
than Clara. One of memory's pleasantest pic- 
tures is her glowing face as she came in to tell 
me of the fine time she had been having with 
her sled. She did not care so much for the 
society of children of her own age in the house. 
She preferred to " help me " about my work as 
secretary to her father. 

" One of her most noticeable traits as a little 
child was her interest in everything about her. 
She was never dull. There was a bright, alert 
expression in her face that kept you constantly 
expecting something. Her progress was steady. 
She was able to concentrate her attention 
upon a subject at will. She wasted no time 
vacillating, but decided to do a thing and went 
directly and simply about it. As might be ex- 
pected, she was remarkably truthful." 

Eager interest in living, energy, decision, 
and sincerity — these, as they marked her char- 
acter at the beginning, remained with her to 
the end. Almost the same traits are signaled 
in a letter from another friend, written about 
her later girlhood : — 



6 CLARA FRENCH 

" I was strongly impressed with her truthful- 
ness, honesty, conscientiousness, and purity of 
thought and act. She was introspective and 
analytical, even at that age, and studied her 
motives of thought and deed. I believe her 
inmost thought could bear the strongest sun- 
light. Clara was sensitive, and ardent in her 
affections. Her sympathy with the sad and 
sorrowing was expressed less by words and 
tears than by her deep silence. This silence 
was one of her peculiarities ; it was a silence 
of her whole being, and in it lay much of her 
power. She was, in general, reticent relative 
to her own convictions and emotions. 

" Clara's lessons were a pastime rather than 
a task. Her clear, incisive intellect seemed to 
penetrate at a glance to the very depth of the 
author's meaning. She knew nothing of intel- 
lectual toil or effort in those days. 

" Clara's acquaintance with natural sciences 
— mineralogy in particular — was quite re- 
markable in one so young. She had a little 
cabinet which was her special pride. She de- 
lighted in giving me her little ' lectures ' upon 
her ' stones.' ' Flowers are sweet and pretty/ 



MEMORIAL SKETCH 7 

she said, ' but not so pretty as stones. I 
love stones best.' At the age of fourteen, she 
assisted in classifying and arranging the cabi- 
net in the Mansfield, Pa., Normal School. Her 
interest in this subject grew steadily. Her 
collection had become quite large before she 
entered college, and I could not but feel and 
express regret when I found her attention di- 
verted to literature. I had looked for her to 
make rapid strides in the sciences, and I be- 
lieve the change was not made without many 
misgivings and regrets on her part." 

A significant period in Clara's life was spent 
at Indiana, Pa., whither the family moved in 
1878. Here she prepared for college in the 
Normal School of which her father was prin- 
cipal. In 1880 she returned to her beloved 
Burlington, where she took her Freshman 
year at the University of Vermont. During 
this year she was confirmed in the Episcopal 
Church, of which her parents were members. 
In the autumn of her Sophomore year, she en- 
tered Smith College, where she was graduated 
in June, 1884. A year of graduate study in 
literature at Oxford, England, was followed by 



8 CLARA FRENCH 

a year and a half of teaching in the Normal 
School at New Paltz, Ulster County, New York. 
The winter of 1887-88 she spent at Cornell, 
where she received the Master's degree in 
the spring. In September, 1888, she went to 
Wellesley College, where she had been ap- 
pointed instructor in the department of English 
literature. After less than two weeks of work, 
she was stricken with typhoid fever, and died 
on the 6th of October. She was twenty-five 
years old. 

No life could have been more outwardly un- 
eventful. Passed almost entirely within col- 
lege walls, it knew no obvious excitement or 
romance : passed, with the exception of a year 
and a half, in distinct preparation, it was to 
all seeming broken short at the very moment 
of fulfillment. Yet the quiet years were full 
of eager outreaching toward the two supreme 
realities of Truth and Passion j and to those 
who knew her best, the life was manifest as a 
completed whole, in which a noble and defi- 
nite development was perfectly achieved. 

Of Clara French's brief twenty-five years of 
earthly life, the most critical and decisive were 



MEMORIAL SKETCH g 

probably those which she spent at Smith Col- 
lege, Northampton, Mass. 

Women's opportunities for a broader ed- 
ucation were then comparatively new, and 
women's colleges had not yet passed out of 
the experimental stage. The conditions of life 
which they offered were in some ways singu- 
larly interesting. Simpler in many respects 
than at present, and inferior in scholarly equip- 
ment to the colleges of to-day, they were yet 
permeated by a spirit of fresh enthusiasm and 
high ambition which went far to compensate 
for defects in machinery. The three hundred 
students gathered at Northampton were athirst 
for wisdom and for experience. They were 
mostly from New England, and the moral 
strenuousness of the old New England stock 
showed itself sometimes in an over-minute ex- 
citability of conscience. They were modern 
girls, with the modern impulse to challenge the 
foundations of faith and to analyze the finest 
fibres of character. It was natural that a cer- 
tain tendency to exaltation and morbid intro- 
spection should not always be avoided. But 
any unfortunate elements in the life were 



IO CLARA FRENCH 

largely counteracted by the sane and inspiring 
beauty of the surrounding nature, by the wise 
guidance of certain Professors, and by the vis- 
tas into world-wisdom as well as into world- 
problem constantly opened through study. In 
this vivid young community, Clara French soon 
became a prominent figure. She was strong, 
effective, self-possessed, with a large and easy 
cleverness that commanded notice. Although 
a mere girl, she already, by appearance and 
manner, gave the impression of maturity. 
This impression, however, was misleading. 
She had awakened before she came to that 
self-consciousness which is always tumultuous 
and chaotic with strong natures in youth. In 
spite of her outward quietude, she had not yet 
found her true self; and the intensity of her 
nature threatened in those days to be self-con- 
suming. Uncontrolled except by surface stoi- 
cism, conflicting forces drove her through her 
college years from phase to phase of experi- 
ence. Her intellectual life was as yet com- 
paratively undeveloped. Books, of course, 
were devoured : Carlyle, Emerson, Shelley, 
George Eliot, Arnold, Clough, and — he was 



MEMORIAL SKETCH II 

a discovery in those days — Browning. Class- 
work opened the way for endless discussions 
of the great problems, psychological, theologi- 
cal, social, which are usually attacked with 
audacity in inverse ratio to age. But it yet re- 
mained true, as it had been true in childhood, 
that intellectual effort was unknown to Clara 
French. She was content to rest in her in- 
stinctive and natural power, and she knew as 
yet nothing of absorption in the pursuit of ab- 
stract truth, or of that disinterested devotion 
to pure scholarship which was to form so large 
a factor in her later life. The line of her con- 
scious development in those years was mainly 
ethical. They were years of growth and strug- 
gle. Life was no easy task to her, then or 
ever, but she met it with high courage. She 
did not carry away from Smith College a disci- 
plined or perhaps even a thoroughly awakened 
intellect ; but she carried away something bet- 
ter, a character of which the trend towards 
selfless nobility, towards controlled consecra- 
tion, was determined once for all. A few 
words of her own, written just before her Sen- 
ior year, tell simply and earnestly how inesti- 



12 CLARA FRENCH 

mable a debt she felt herself to owe to her 
Alma Mater. 

" I 'm going to hunt up something vigorous 
to read. I feel all let down mentally. 

"Later. Joshua and Paul proved vigorous 
enough for my wants. I should like to write 
about Joshua. 

" One thing has suggested another, and 
something has just come back to me which I 
had hardly thought of since it happened. I 
can remember perfectly the bright September 
morning, two years ago, when I took my first 
look over the college grounds. I was entirely 
alone, and except for one or two bowing ac- 
quaintances I knew no one there. I remem- 
ber wondering what my life there would be, 
and thinking all the vague thoughts that come 
into one's mind at such a time. How far 
away it all seems now ! If there is one thing 
above everything else in my life for which I 
am, I trust, truly and humbly grateful, it is 
that that September morning found me where 
it did. That all our plans were guided as they 
were gives me new hope and strength. For 
whatever sadness has come to me I can only 



MEMORIAL SKETCH I 3 

be thankful, for with it has come a sweetness 
and a seriousness that probably could not have 
come in any other way." 

A few extracts from her letters, written in 
the summer after her Senior year, will give 
suggestions of her outlook, interests, and am- 
bitions, at the trying time when the conven- 
tional training is over, and the young life has 
to decide for itself "What next?" It will 
be seen that Clara French was not lacking 
in cheery courage, sound common-sense, and 
firmly-held purpose : — 

"You would have liked the clouds that I 
watched this morning, as I was dressing for 
church. They were dazzlingly white, the 
nearest ones, and they moved very fast ; and 
they curled a little piece of themselves back, 
every little way, to show the delicate clouds 
that had tried to keep up with the movement of 
the strong ones but had only drawn themselves 
out into fine transparent bands, so that back 
of all was the blue, very clear, but softened." 

" I 've been reading ' Blithedale,' which I 
finished last night. Tell me about it. I don't 
think it is up to Hawthorne's level. What do 



14 CLARA FRENCH 

you think ? It seems to me that social and 
economical subjects are not tenuous enough 
to slip into the mystery-compartment of Haw- 
thorne's sub-consciousness, and to come out 
delicately individualized though still typical. 
This ' Blithedale ' is too obviously a type. If 
it were not, the interest would increase instead 
of falling off at the middle. I mean to do more 
reading Hawthorne this summer. Likewise, I 
will try to get hold of that life of Maurice." 

Here is a bit of advice that shows her un- 
usual portion of a humorous common-sense : — 

" Don't make yourself think. If you feel 
that you ought to spur yourself into some 
thought, choose that of the upper strata. 
There is plenty of that of which you have not 
even taken the dip, and you '11 find that it will 
have its own economic and industrial value. 
Let the metamorphic rock alone, except to be 
strengthened by knowing that it is under every- 
thing. And of all things don't bore through 
into the molten interior." 

And here, from the same letter, is a per- 
plexed page or two about her own life. 

" Now about me, and it will be much me. 



MEMORIAL SKETCH 15 

I 've been much perplexed. What is the pro- 
portion of one's duty to one's self and to other 
people ? How know the dividing-line between 
a selfish egotism, and a cowardly shrinking 
from assuming the responsibility that one's 
two talents lay upon one ? And how know 
what one's two talents are ? ' The bearings of 
which observation lies in the application of 
it.' Here am I, a girl of average mind, nour- 
ished for four years on the conventional mental 
pabulum, with rather more than the average 
deceptive ability of rhetorical veneering, and 
of just enough power of self-analysis to perplex 
myself. More and more each day I realize 
that I do need a tremendous amount of intel- 
lectual ballast to keep me steady. Moreover, 
I 'm not at all sure that I have the energy and 
concentration and steadfastness to keep up a 
solitary work. The question, of much pream- 
ble, is therefore this : ought I to prepare my- 
self to teach — literature, I suppose ? Could 
I do with writing for an avocation what I could 
not do with it for a vocation ? " 

As was suggested by her friend whose words 
are given above, Clara's early bent had been 



1 6 CLARA FRENCH 

towards science. The quality of her mind, in- 
deed, was distinctively scientific in accuracy 
and analytical power. But her nature pressed 
too near to actual life to find its final home in 
the remote sphere of science : and she had 
turned, as this letter shows, less by the delib- 
erate change of intention than by instinct, to a 
more immediately vital form of thought. The 
expression of the life of the soul through liter- 
ature had-now become, and remained to the 
end, the dominant interest of her intellectual 
life. Desirous of pursuing graduate studies 
in her specialty, she went to Oxford, England, 
for the winter of 1884-85. It was during her 
year at Oxford that the definite conception of 
a high and arduous scholarship first came to 
her. In the outward majesty, austere yet 
lovely, of that " fair city with its crown of tow- 
ers " she found remoteness from the feverish 
life of the present, and a revelation of the 
sacred past that at once soothed and uplifted 
her spirit : in the mighty Bodleian library, she 
recognized perhaps for the first time, the value 
of the pure idea. She plunged into study, 
specializing on the Elizabethan period. To her 



MEMORIAL SKETCH \J 

amazement, she found standards of work which 
her abundant cleverness could not satisfy with- 
out strenuous effort. Such effort she gave, 
with spirited and steady devotion. Her work 
was soon recognized as remarkable for both 
thoroughness and insight ; but it brought her 
a better reward than outward recognition. 
She left Oxford with an inward peace not 
again to be shaken, and with an ideal of schol- 
arship such as few women attain. Seldom, if 
ever, after this was she content when a gen- 
eralization was brilliant without asking if it 
were sound ; and it was no longer possible for 
her to confuse with definite thought the exalta- 
tion of emotional suggestion. 

The makings of a pedant were not in Clara 
French. But any danger that her new pas- 
sion for research and study should lead her 
away from the needs of average humanity was 
counteracted by her next experience. After 
a summer on the heights in Switzerland, she 
returned to America. No greater change can 
be imagined than that from the sweetness 
and light of Oxford to an American Normal 
School in the country : yet it was as teacher 



1 8 CLARA FRENCH 

in such a school that she was to spend her next 
year and a half. Now were manifested the fresh- 
ness, breadth, and sweetness of her learning. 
She passed with entire ardor from the subtle- 
ties of old English and Elizabethan literature 
to devising new methods of teaching geogra- 
phy. The years at New Paltz were far from 
the least happy of her life. The school was 
new and full of spirit, the surrounding country, 
at the foot of Lake Mohonk and in full sight 
of the Catskills, singularly lovely. Although 
intensely humble and self - distrustful, Clara 
French grew to know something of the con- 
sciousness of power. She inherited the in- 
stinct of a teacher, and her work was a delight. 
Her keen intellect and personal force made 
themselves felt through the entire school. The 
second year's teaching brought her much plea- 
sant companionship with other college women 
employed in the school. The bright busy-ness 
and energy of the life are well reflected in her 
letters. 

January 15, 1887. 
Friday afternoon was the most wonderful 
time we have had since the snow came. I 



MEMORIAL SKETCH 1 9 

wish I could make you see it as we saw it. 
After school we walked up to the top of the 
hill. The trees were covered and hung with 
ice, and the clouds were rising from the west- 
ern hills. When we first looked, the clouds 
were so low that only one piece of woods was 
visible on the mountain-side, and that was a 
soft deep blue, with the cloud-trails still in the 
tops of the higher trees. Then the clouds rolled 
farther back, and from behind them fell an 
almost unearthly pale golden light on the hills, 
deepening afterward in places to a rose color, 
while the eastern clouds held their thick, dense 
blue. 

To - day has made an epoch. I 've read 
Amiel, in the translation, I 'm sorry to say, but 
that was at hand, and I had to have something. 
I sat down after breakfast, and I read till after 
people came home from church • then I hardly 
laid the book down during the afternoon. 
The record of his youth and early manhood, 
with their subtleties and involutions, and the 
perpetual failure of coincidence between de- 
sign and desire, carried me along in sympathy. 
With increased age, the life becomes more and 



20 CLARA FRENCH 

more pathetic, even tragic in a non-dramatic 
way, but I feel a little irritation in finding him 
at fifty substantially where he was at twenty- 
five ; I don't mean in external achievement 
only, but in his philosophy of life. I shall 
finish the book to-morrow, and then look for- 
ward to the time when I shall re-read it with 
intervals for thought. 

April 17. 
I suppose the notes are scholarly, but notes 
— unless they refer to things historical — have 
become a weariness to my flesh. The ever- 
lasting comment and criticism and inference 
and explanation I beg to be spared until my 
present mood is passed. I want to receive in 
silence what I can of the thought and experi- 
ence of a great soul, without having some im- 
pertinent middleman with all the encyclopaedias 
at his hand, and a kind intent to my edification, 
step in and remark, " Not so fast, my young 
reader : x is a sand-hill in the desert of Sahara, 
and y lived in the farthest Aleutian isle, in the 
year of grace 1139." If we can't create, leave 
us at least the privilege of interpreting to our- 
selves the creations of others. And by way of 



MEMORIAL SKETCH 21 

fitting climax to this tirade, give me " Waring " 
in a nutshell. Perhaps your diagnosis of my 
frame of mind towards criticism is the right 
one. But I 'm not sure that I don't find in 
your ignoring of the individual and deification 
of all truth a sort of inverted intellectual pan- 
theism. 

We 've had our two days' vacation, and be- 
gun our last stretch of the year. My work is 
highly amusing, its range being from penman- 
ship to universal history. I have only four 
classes, and one of them is composed of one 
man, aged twenty-five. It is English litera- 
ture. He 's the most encouraging material 
I 've had. I gave him some reading to do for 
one lesson, and he came in with the remark 
that he had opened the book — one of Car- 
lyle's — at another place, and become so inter- 
ested that he read his time out and did not 
turn to my reference. One can do something 
with a youth who is actually interested in a 
book. 

You should be with us now. The roads are 
good, and we take long walks again. Yester- 
day we left home early in the morning, drove 



22 CLARA FRENCH 

to Highland by way of Clintondale, encamped 
at noon under a big tree and ate our luncheon, 
and then proceeded to Poughkeepsie. And 
never in my life did I see so many different 
kinds of little beasts and birds, with tails and 
wings, frisking and hopping and flying about, 
on fences, over stone -walls, by clear brooks, 
and through the lazy air. And M. showed me 
all the pretty colors on the hillsides, and in 
the meadows, and laughed at my attempts to 
tell what they were made of. And we dis- 
cussed the condition and possibilities of the 
farming class, and the relative utility of litera- 
ture and medicine, and had a delicious, long, 
lazy morning. 

January 30. 
The sunset last night was one of the things 
that one can't describe, that one would not 
venture even to attempt to describe; but I 
shall see it always as we saw the whole west 
from the hilltop. It was the most wonderful 
sunset that I 've seen here. It was one of the 
kind that begin a new epoch for one, revealing 
all one's "sins, negligences and ignorances" in 
their real ugliness, but giving one a glimpse 



MEMORIAL SKETCH 23 

of the perfection that is not of earth, or of 
time, and a constraining impulse towards purer 
living." 

In spite of her pleasure in the life at New 
Paltz, Clara French could not long be satisfied 
there. Her intellectual hunger, once awak- 
ened, was steady and strong, and her desire 
for further study led her to Cornell University, 
where she spent her twenty-fifth year in the 
study of English. Her work during the year, 
and the impression produced by her scholar- 
ship and character, are described for us in a 
letter from her honored and beloved teacher, 
Professor Corson : — 



The Cornell University. 
Department of English Literature. 

Ithaca, N. Y., 21 January, 1892. 
My dear Miss Scudder : — 

You ask me to write you a few lines in re- 
gard to Miss French's residence at the Cor- 
nell University. 

Miss French was a resident graduate dur- 
ing the academic year, 1887-88, and received 
her Master's Degree at the annual Commence- 
ment, June 21, 188S. 



24 CLARA FRENCH 

During my connection with the University 
up to that time, a period of seventeen years, I 
had not had a student in my department who 
did more thorough work, or whose growth in 
certain directions was so rapid. 

In addition to her special studies as a grad- 
uate student, she took all the regular studies 
of the department, and was facile princeps in 
all. She read with me extensively in Anglo- 
Saxon, her reading including the whole of the 
A.-S. epic of Beowulf, a work of which she 
was specially fond. 

Just before she came to the University, the 
Mrs. A. S. Barnes Shakespeare Prize had been 
established, for the best essay on some sub- 
ject connected with the plays of Shakespeare. 
This prize was first awarded to Miss French, 
for her essay here presented on the Play of 
King John. 

Her thesis for the Master's Degree on 
" Chaucer and Langland as Reflectors of their 
Age," was the result of a thorough and inde- 
pendent study of her subject. 

In a conversation I had with her, on the eve 
of her leaving the University, I expressed my 



MEMORIAL SKETCH 2$ 

great satisfaction with what she had done, dur- 
ing the year, and my assurance that she had a 
most successful career before her as a literary 
teacher. She asked me what advice I thought 
she more especially needed, in regard to her 
future improvement and efficiency in her line 
of work. I recommended that she should de- 
velop and train her voice for an effective vocal 
interpretation of literature, as I thought such 
interpretation would do more for her students 
than any interpretation that could be given 
through lectures, though the latter had their 
use. She had an agreeable voice, but it had 
not received that development and cultivation 
demanded for the most effective interpretation 
of the masterpieces of poetic and dramatic 
literature. 

The last letter I ever received from her, she 
wrote especially to inquire about the methods 
she should pursue in the vocal culture I had 
recommended to her, and whether I could as- 
sist her in the matter, through correspondence. 
But a short time after this, I was shocked with 
the news of her death. 

Notwithstanding her splendid record as a 



26 CLARA FRENCH 

student, the most noteworthy fact connected 
with her residence at the University was the 
influence she exerted not only upon the women 
students with whom she was brought into im- 
mediate relationship, but also upon the occu- 
pants generally of the Sage College. Many 
expressed to me their sense of the inspiration 
they had derived from the high ideals which she 
was known to cherish, and which she worked 
conscientiously and enthusiastically to realize. 

Her amiability and her genuineness of char- 
acter endeared her to all with whom she came 
in contact, and exerted a wholesome influence 
upon all. 

The world lost much by her untimely death. 

Believe me, my dear Miss Scudder, 
Very truly yours, 

Hiram Corson. 

Miss Vtda D. Scudder, 
Boston, Mass. 

Clara's scholastic work, centring in her two 
essays, was, as this letter will show, honest, 
delicately finished, and sympathetic. Yet such 
work was in her mind incidental merely to the 



MEMORIAL SKETCH 2J 

real gain which this year brought her — the 
deeper insight into the spiritual revelation of 
literature, and into the power of art as the free 
expression of personality. A friend writes an 
account of the impression she produced in the 
University : — 

" Coming back a few days late to college 
that year, I was greeted on all sides with word 
of the new student who was come among us for 
graduate work. Her scholarly breeding and 
fine intellectual poise had so soon made her a 
prominent figure in our college world. We 
found our own work invested with new dignity 
and meaning as she went about among us in- 
tent on the same studies. Yet we dimly felt 
that study was to her something finer, better, 
nobler, than to us, and it was with a sudden 
sense of awakening that we longed to gain 
admittance to that rare world in which she 
seemed to live. She was always willing to 
help us. Sure of ready sympathy, we brought 
our essays and translations into her busy days 
to be criticised with the conscientious thor- 
oughness which marked all she did. She made 
us all feel a keener liking for study, and to 



28 CLARA FRENCH 

some she was the beginning of that real delight 
in books and knowledge which will last while 
life here lasts. Though she never sought to 
influence by precept or example, I doubt if in 
all that houseful of life there was another so 
pervading a personality as hers. We learned 
to look through her eyes and to adopt her 
standards, not because she imposed them on 
us, but because they seemed so supremely 
right. And in our play as in our work she 
was the life-centre. Her fun was irresistible, 
and I have never known so keen and bright a 
sense of humor, always captivating and never 
ill-natured. A young woman who was a sopho- 
more that year writes me : — 

" ' She seemed to stand to me for the best 
which the term college woman may imply, self- 
controlled and strong and wise ; not ignorant 
of the world and its every-day affairs because 
of her love for higher things, nor impatient 
with it, nor discouraged by it, but serene in 
her belief that the end will be right, and eager 
to do all in her individual power to bring that 
right about.' 

" To many who knew her but little, she is still 



MEMORIAL SKETCH 29 

an inspiration and incentive, and to those who 
knew her best, she is what no words can say.' " 
It was a great delight to Clara French when 
in the early spring of 1888 she received the ap- 
pointment of Instructor in English Literature 
at Wellesley College. The position offered 
her for the first time in her life opportunity for 
the exercise of the highest powers within her ; 
it was one to which her development for the 
past eight years seemed consciously or uncon- 
sciously to have tended. 

She came to Wellesley in September, 1888, 
grave, silent, her whole nature kindled with ar- 
dent and steady devotion. " I can imagine no 
life," she said, with serious eyes, " more satisfy- 
ing than that which I am to live at Wellesley." 

Within a month, she was withdrawn into the 
Unseen. The latent power of her nature was 
to be put forth in no earthly work. 
" Look thou not down, but up ! 

To uses of a cup, 
The festal board, lamp's flash, and trumpet's peal, 

The new wine's foaming flow, 

The Master's lips aglow ! 
Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with 
earth's wheel ? " 



30 CLARA FRENCH 

In her short life, the evolution of character 
was swift, clear, and complete. Her nature 
moved from passion to peace : and the peace 
she attained was peace, not of stagnation, but 
of poise. Perhaps she expressed her deepest 
discovery when she wrote : " It is not in exal- 
tation, but in equilibrium, that strength lies." 
The over-analytical subtlety that in the old 
days too often wasted her life-force in twisted 
thinkings, was replaced by the broader vision 
that saw life steadily and saw it whole ; she 
had grown to feel below all surface complexity 
and confusion the fundamental simplicity of 
truth. She had developed a singular definite- 
ness of nature ; her powers no longer clashed, 
but were held in delicate adjustment, ready 
for instant use. Her sincerity was absolute ; 
it went deeper than word or thought — it 
was sincerity of attitude. Perhaps her most 
striking trait in later years was her absolute 
self-control ; a control no longer the expres- 
sion of surface stoicism, but of a firm and quiet- 
soul. So great was this control that it pro- 
duced in her manner and atmosphere a strange 
stillness, and in the presence of this stillness 



MEMORIAL SKETCH 3 1 

restlessness and pain died away. Her nature 
was serene, with the serenity not of instinct 
but of conquest, and from her silent strength 
and cheer there flowed an uplifting power. 

Life had grown more to her than speech, 
and expression became increasingly a matter 
of the deed, not of the word. Less and less 
did she brood over the insoluble problems, 
or waste her vitality in the contemplation of 
abstractions. To the actual needs of those 
around her she turned her vision. Some ex- 
tracts from the letters of her last year will 
show how nobly practical her introspective and 
analytical nature had become. 

" I find that to shut myself away from the 
possibilities and opportunities of daily effort 
and to indulge in an exhaustive outpouring of 
the profitless side of one's self seems both un- 
necessary and selfish. I don't speak of such 
things as we can profitably touch, but of that 
vast realm of attractive speculation which 
brings us nothing and leaves us nowhere. I 
have followed its ignes fatui at times through 
devious ways. I think I shall do so no more. 

" The soul has its times of tranquillity, dear, 



32 CLARA FRENCH 

when the deep places of life are untroubled. 
And it is not in exaltation but in equilibrium 
that strength lies." 

" I value abstractions, I am roused by prob- 
lems, but I cannot see that abstraction or 
problem has any worth, that life has any mys- 
tery — what do you mean by life, any way ? — 
except as it involves for good or ill human des- 
tiny, and human destiny is the destiny of in- 
dividuals of the human race. A soul, a life, 
is to me greater than a formula. The vital 
truths of existence, I think, are comparatively 
few, and do not depend upon constant, compli- 
cated, intellectual processes. As much beyond 
the fundamental truths as we can get, by all 
means, but these first ; and these with most of 
us, I fancy, are hardly realized even when re- 
duced to syllogism. You spell truth with a 
capital, and make of it an independent exist- 
ence to be sought for and absorbed ; but unless 
truth is God, what can it do for man ? It is 
only a personality that can touch a personality. 
We are not yet perfect spirits ; we are despe- 
rately complex beings hampered by the God- 
given trinity of the world, the flesh, and the 



MEMORIAL SKETCH 33 

devil. To help the world we must take it as 
we find it, and we find men and women with 
trivial perplexities and interests ready and 
longing for the life which is of God, but not 
to be led to it nor kept in it by an abstruse 
formula." 

" I shall probably continue to think that 
homely i available ' virtue is better for the 
world and greater in the sight of the angels 
above than inefficient exaltation. The homely 
nature, doing what it sees to do, rises by the 
doing to greater heights of vision, and at the 
end does not go down empty-handed. It is a 
case of doing the will and knowing the doc- 
trine. Such a nature grows constantly strong 
in spiritual perception and vigor, and begins 
on this planet to run in the grooves of its eter- 
nal development, that is, of productive energy. 
Of course I prefer the rarer, less tangible 
qualities in combination with this efficient cor- 
relative, but, either alone, I rank the other 
higher. 

" I think we have analyzed too much. Of 
course you will say just here, ' Professor Cor- 
son's influence ' : granted, but I think it reaches 



34 CLARA FRENCH 

truth. I am undergoing a reaction from that 
spinning of cobwebs from my own spiritual 
or intellectual insides which I have indulged 
in. We have no time for it; we get abso- 
lutely nowhere, and meanwhile the realities 
of our present life press upon us. I think 
that no soul ever gained a permanent leverage 
by sitting down and saying, ' Now first I must 
construct my theory of the universe ; after- 
wards I will use it.' The universe is in the 
hands of its good Lord, and He does not hold 
us responsible for its general course. He 
gives us little things to do, very little things, 
and in doing them we come to understand 
somewhat of the sweep of the life of humanity 
and humanity's God, and to trust Him for 
what we cannot understand. No laborious 
labyrinthine pursuit will enable us directly to 
find ourselves. We must first find others, then 
we wake and see that the discovery of our 
important selves was not the thing that was 
to be sought first. Somewhat modified, per- 
haps, I am coming to take the position of that 
familiar bit from Landor : ' I meddle not at 
present with infinity and eternity ; when I can 



MEMORIAL SKETCH 35 

understand them I will talk about them.' Now 
I know that this seems a low view of life to 
you. ... Is it so low? I look back to the 
Life that was lived eighteen centuries ago by 
the shores of Galilee, and I find in it, in its 
deeds and teachings, the perfect warrant for 
such a view. He did not tell us, ' Thou shalt 
spend the vital energies of thy threescore 
years on earth in striving to understand the 
Lord thy God with all thy intellect.' His 
commands for this life were simple, very 
simple ; for the next, He Himself will surely 
care." 

These quotations will appear the more un- 
usual when we remember that Clara French, 
at the time when she wrote them, was pressing 
forward into an order of intellectual life and 
work which too often tends to alienate the na- 
ture from general sympathy, and to carry it 
towards isolation. 

Her nearer personal interests had become 
in these last years very definite. The lofty and 
generally-diffused enthusiasms of her youth had 
concentrated themselves on three especial lines 
of energy. 



36 CLARA FRENCH 

Clara French was a college woman first and 
foremost. Hers was emphatically the trained 
nature — trained to such distinctness of self- 
knowledge, such sense for proportion and nice 
adjustment of powers as are making of our col- 
lege women to-day one of the most practical 
classes in the community. It was inevitable 
that a large share of her personal interest 
should be centred in the women's colleges of 
the country, and in the work of their alumnae. 
While feeling keenly the defects and weakness 
of these colleges and the tentative character 
of their work, she yet believed with entire loy- 
alty in their ideals, and was ready to place her 
life-force at their disposal. 

Her interest in educational work for women 
was part of a deeper devotion. It rested on 
her enthusiasm for disinterested scholarship ; 
a scholarship with no utilitarian end, marked 
by the distinction of thought which results 
from clearness, sobriety, and reverence of in- 
tellectual vision. The lack of such dynamic 
scholarship Matthew Arnold signaled as the 
great defect in our American civilization ; 
scholarship of this order, almost unknown 



MEMORIAL SKETCH 37 

among women, it is perhaps not too much to 
say that Clara French was on the high-road to 
attain. 

Yet, as her letters clearly indicate, she could 
never have been contented with an exclusively 
intellectual life. Life in the concrete had al- 
ways the strongest claim upon her. It followed 
that her deepest interest was given to the mod- 
ern movement towards sociological reform. 
The movement was less extended five years 
ago than it is now, and Clara French's life 
never chanced to bring her within its full 
sweep ; yet her thoughts were tending towards 
it, and her swift and keen intuition had pene- 
trated to the very heart of the modern method 
of help. She writes : — 

" I 'm coming to think that to reach people 
who are — in some senses — below you, you 
must touch them first on their own plane, show 
that you are interested in the things, trivial 
though they often are, that interest them ; and 
then you can by degrees raise them to your 
own plane. This mounting a stage, stretching 
down a hand to some one on the ground, and 
expecting that person to keep pace with you 



38 CLARA FRENCH 

as you run along, is not practical ; it is too 
much of a strain on the other person's mus- 
cles." 

The movement which has since crystallized 
in the establishment of college settlements for 
women among the poor of large cities was in its 
infancy in 1888. Clara French's mind was one 
of the first in which the idea took shape, and 
with most entire sympathy and steadiest faith 
did she enter into the earliest efforts of the 
movement to find realization. The plan for a 
settlement, indeed, aroused all her most serious 
enthusiasm. It was a plan for the work of 
college women : it afforded scope for patient, 
keen, and broad investigation in that science 
of sociology which more and more tends to en- 
gross the intellect of the day, and it promised 
to offer a life of as practical and direct conse- 
cration to humblest service as even she could 
desire. Before the plan was realized, she was 
withdrawn from visible share in its out-work- 
ing ; yet the impulse of her quiet faith and 
thoughtful hope will not soon pass away. 

To reduce a life to a formula is an impossi- 
bility ; to try to penetrate its essential quality 



MEMORIAL SKETCH 39 

is perhaps not only impossible but wrong. 
Clara French's own personal experience was 
direct and simple, yet she gave the impression 
of one who had touched life at many points, 
and not only touched but entered. This im- 
pression was due to a salient peculiarity of her 
nature, her strong power of identifying her 
life with other lives. Sympathetic experience 
was to her, both in intensity and in depth, 
what personal experience is to most people. 
Always ardent in friendship, her nature before 
the end became almost absolutely selfless. 
The trouble or the joy of one near to her did 
not only produce on her a reflex effect ; it was 
her very own, affecting the inmost fibres of 
her being. Thus she had lived many lives in 
one, and possessed a breadth and wisdom rare 
in far maturer years. Fullness of life, intense 
yet controlled, was the salient fact of her na- 
ture. She was one of those people who always 
make on others a distinct impression, yet whom 
it is impossible to classify. In spite of her 
student-life she was not exclusively, perhaps 
not primarily, an intellectual woman. Nor 
was she preeminently emotional nor practical, 



40 CLARA FRENCH 

though her nature on both sides was strongly 
developed. She would have disclaimed for 
herself with most honest earnestness any strik- 
ing spirituality of nature. Faith, strong though 
silent, lay at the heart of her noble woman- 
hood ; but of the mystic she had nothing. 
With a steadfast humility she said, in the last 
months of her life : "I am one of the plain, 
every-day people of this world, with only occa- 
sional glimpses of another. I trust indeed that 
it may be so 

" ' That earth may gain by one man the more, 

And the gain of earth shall be heaven's gain too.' " 

By no peculiarity of nature did Clara French 
impress herself on others. Yet her effect in 
many lives can never be effaced. It was due 
not to her gifts but to herself ; to the very 
vigor and movement of her personality, to the 
intensity of the life that shone through her. 
Her nature was once described as a clear and 
steady flame ; and it had indeed not only the 
radiance, but also the purity and the aspiration 
of fire. 

Her grave is in the shadow of great oak- 



MEMORIAL SKETCH 41 

trees at Syracuse, New York. The cross that 
rises above it bears the words, — 

" Rejoice and be glad with her, all ye that 
love her : rejoice for joy with her, all ye that 
mourn for her." 

VIDA D. SCUDDER. 



THE 

DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 

AN ESSAY FOR THE MRS. A. S. BARNES 
SHAKESPEARE PRIZE 

D. C— 68. 



Note. The references to the Troublesome Raigne 
of King John are to the page of the reprint of the old 
play in Hazlitt's Shakspere's Library, Part II. Volume 
I.; those to Shakespeare's King John are to the act, 
scene, and line of the Globe Shakespeare. 



THE 



DRAMATIC ACTION AND 
MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 



In turning from the study of character and 
psychological motive in Shakespeare to that of 
dramatic action there is at first a haziness of 
understanding of the new point of view. Our 
familiarity with the plays blinds us to new as- 
pects of them ; we see in them only what we 
have been used to see. Accordingly we may 
perhaps in the case of one play make clearer 
the meaning of the dramatic action and the 
outworking of the dramatic motive by a run- 
ning comparison with a play comprehending 
the same events and characters but of inferior 
dramatic workmanship. The Troublesome 
Raigne of John, King of England, a play by 
an unknown author, first printed in 1591, may 
thus serve as a foil to Shakespeare's King 



46 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

John. A careful reading of this earlier play 
fails to disclose in it a legitimate dramatic 
motive. Its purpose, so far as any one con- 
trolling purpose can be discovered, is to exhibit 
in proportions and colors as hateful as possi- 
ble, the corruption and tyranny of the Romish 
Church. It has several distinct currents of 
events, but they converge to no dramatic end. 
It has a long succession of episodes, but there 
runs through them no combining purpose. This 
spirit of anti-Romanism, violent as it is, — and 
of its violence we shall have proof further 
on, — is not artistically embodied in concrete 
form ; it is rather enforced by a series of 
sledge-hammer blows, their only unity being 
that they are struck from the same shoulder, 
and hit the same spot. Shakespeare's King 
John has, however, an unmistakable dramatic 
purpose, we might almost say a series of concen- 
tric purposes, the immediate concrete end be- 
ing involved in the broader and deeper motive. 
The right of John to the throne, the inmost 
political motive, is secondary to the exhibition 
of his cowardice, selfishness and greed, and the 
train of calamities in which these passions in- 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 47 

volve other persons and the whole nation ; and 
both these ends are, in turn, made to show 
forth that keen patriotism with which the Eng- 
land of Elizabeth tingled in every nerve. For 
these motives, severally, the old play gives us 
a succession of political artifices and deceits ; 
a confused assemblage of persons bound by no 
organic tie ; and a circumscribed insularity of 
nationalism. 

We may consider briefly the differences in 
the dramatic presentation of the two plays and 
the significance of the most important of these 
differences. It is to be noticed at the outset 
that Shakespeare made no essential changes 
in the plot of the early play. If there is no 
play in which Shakespeare departs further 
from authentic history, there is also none in 
which he follows more closely the outline of 
events laid down in his original. But by an 
omission here, an addition there ; by throwing 
one scene into the background through narra- 
tion, by bringing a narrated action forward 
upon the stage; now by severing a relation 
between two characters and now by making 
that relation closer, —by such changes of con- 



48 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

struction, each in itself slight, Shakespeare has 
wrought into indissoluble unity a mass of di- 
verse elements. 

It may be said in general that the most ob- 
vious of Shakespeare's changes in scene and 
speech are for condensation, compression and 
compactness, tending to unity. Thus we see 
that in the first scene the King and Faulcon- 
bridge are at once brought into closer relation 
by John's direct address to Philip and his bro- 
ther Robert, " What men are you ? " without 
the mediation of Essex, who in the earlier play 
is made to question the brothers. The writer 
of the earlier play makes Lady Faulconbridge 
enter with her two sons, and the discussion of 
Philip's paternity is begun in her presence be- 
fore the entire court, though the brutality of 
Philip's threats is reserved until he is alone with 
his mother. In Shakespeare the dispute be- 
tween the two brothers and the knighting of 
Philip precede Philip's first characteristic soli- 
loquy, after which Lady Faulconbridge and 
James Gurney enter. Gurney is immediately 
dismissed, having uttered only one speech of 
four words : — 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 49 

" Good leave, good Philip." 1 
which, as a side-light upon Philip's previous 
character and position, are worth a volume of 
commentary, and Philip and his mother are left 
alone. The greater delicacy of Shakespeare's 
arrangement is immediately obvious, as is also 
the stage economy, by which the stage is cleared 
of a part of its crowd of actors, and a slight 
variety is imparted to the view. 

In the Shakespearean version Philip is also 
given the opportunity further to reveal himself 
in soliloquy. 

The entire episode between Philip and Aus- 
tria is greatly shortened by Shakespeare. In 
the earlier play the interest is distracted from 
the main theme of the drama by the frequently 
renewed dispute between these hot-blooded 
nobles, — if we can fairly call Austria hot- 
blooded, who is brave in taunts but cowardly 
in blows. They have a sharp preliminary 
skirmish of words ; Philip chases Austria and 
makes him leave the lion's skin; the nuptial 
arrangements are interrupted by the challenge 
from Philip to Austria and the conferring of 
1 Act I. Sc. i. 231. 



50 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

the Dukedom of Normandy upon Philip. All 
this confuses the action during the meeting of 
the kings, the parley with the citizens, and the 
forming of the marriage-contract. It is the in- 
trusion of a second action at a time when the 
main one is at a highly critical juncture. No- 
tice, on the other hand, that in Shakespeare 
these skirmishes between Philip and Austria 
are carried on to later scenes and always ap- 
pear as entirely subordinate issues. Shake- 
speare binds the several actions together and 
strengthens the chief one by making Philip 
take an important part in the main action, pro- 
posing the league of the kings, whereas in the 
old play Philip is so engrossed with his own 
quarrel that he places himself quite out of the 
main current of events. Shakespeare also 
strengthens the dramatic complication by bring- 
ing Constance and Arthur prominently forward 
in these scenes, while in the old play they are 
but two of the crowd of figures on the stage. 
In the old play, too, there is here introduced a 
touch of gallantry between Philip and Blanche, 
with the inference that Elinor had promised 
Blanche to Philip in marriage. Shakespeare's 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 51 

Philip, however, never appears as even a possi- 
ble lover. To present him in this guise would 
be to destroy the consistent simplicity of the 
part he has to play in the national action of 
the drama. In the Troublesome Raigne, Philip 
kills Austria on the stage and tramples upon 
his body in the very ferocity of revenge, utter- 
ing at the same time a soliloquy relating to 
his personal affairs alone. In Shakespeare 
Philip enters with Austria's head, but his words 
are of the fortunes of the day as affecting the 
English cause. Shakespeare never destroys 
the continuity of dramatic progress by intro- 
ducing at any time irrelevant issues. 

Immediately after the killing of Austria the 
old playwright brings Elinor on the stage as 
the prisoner of Lewis, and there follows a 
taunting of Elinor by Constance in a vein of 
exulting spitefulness which shows how different 
was his conception of Constance from Shake- 
speare's : — 

" Constance doth live to tame thy insolence, 
And on thy head will now avenged be 
For all the mischiefes hatched in thy brain. 



\ 



52 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

My time is now to triumph in thy fall, 

And thou shalt know that Constance will triumph." 1 

To a modern ear the spitefulness of the 
taunt is much emphasized by the position of 
the accent of the last word, but no difference 
of orthoepic standard could make the invective 
mild. After this passage in the old play John 
rescues Elinor, and Arthur is taken prisoner. 
Shakespeare's changes here subserve several 
dramatic purposes. He avoids the choppiness 
of this too frequent change of scene, preserves 
the dignity of the Queen Mother, and forbears 
interfering with the rush of the dramatic cur- 
rent, by introducing Arthur as already taken 
and by narrating in two lines Elinor's capture 
and her rescue, the rescue, let it be noted, be- 
ing accomplished not by John, but by Philip. 

The scene of the plundering of the Priory, 
which in the old play is remarkable for its very 
liberal humor, has no counterpart in the Shake- 
spearean play. Here again the contents of 
several pages are expressed in a few lines : — 

"How I have sped among the clergymen, 
The sums I have collected shall express." 2 

1 Act I. Sc. i. 257-8. 2 Act IV . Sc. ii. 141. 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 53 

This is Shakespeare's equivalent for a scene 
that brings forward several characters who ap- 
pear nowhere else, and disfigures the play by 
its low humor and the virulence of its religious 
partisanship. 

A comparison of the scene between Hubert 
and Arthur in the two plays would include the 
very interesting study of the contrast between 
Shakespeare and the earlier dramatist in char- 
acter drawing, a study in which would be no- 
ticed especially the changing of John from 
an unscrupulous coward and liar to the vic- 
tim of the more subtle weakness, irresolution, 
and fear of Shakespeare's king; the refining 
of Constance from a clamorous virago to a 
wronged and sorrowing mother ; and the rais- 
ing of Philip from a blustering bully to a 
strong, true-hearted Englishman. But it is 
with the dramatic action that we have now to 
do, and we can consider only such points as 
bear directly upon this subject. An indirect 
bearing all the changes referred to have, of 
course, in bringing the drama to an equipoise 
of moderation and in preserving our sympathy 
for each of its characters ; but other changes 



54 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

pertain more closely to the dramatic construc- 
tion. In the scene between Hubert and Ar- 
thur, then, and indeed in the person of Arthur 
wherever he appears, one thing is to be espe- 
cially noticed, his youth as compared with the 
Arthur of the Troublesome Raigne. The Ar- 
thur of the old play appeals personally to the 
citizens of Angiers for the recognition of his 
rights as sovereign, and argues with Hu- 
bert with the subtlety and coolness of a prac- 
ticed dialectician. The reader cannot help 
feeling that if the boy be blinded, his powers 
of disputation will stand him very well in the 
place of one sense. There is really no pathos 
in this earlier scene. But Shakespeare, sim- 
ply by reducing the boy's age so that he can 
have no political ambitions for himself, makes 
him the unconscious centre of one phase of the 
political action of the play, and the occasion 
of all that part of the drama in which Con- 
stance stands as the defender of his helpless- 
ness. The bearing of this slight change on 
the entire movement of the play is of very 
great importance. 

The second coronation of John, which in the 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 55 

old play is performed on the stage in dumb 
show, Shakespeare narrates ; and finally a sig- 
nificant change occurs in the poisoning and 
death of the king. In the earlier play the plot 
for the poisoning is laid on the stage by the 
monk and abbot ; John is poisoned at a ban- 
quet at which Philip is present, though the lat- 
ter is warned in time against the fatal drink ; 
the monk dies from his draught, and Philip 
kills the abbot. All this sanguinary excess 
Shakespeare does away with, partly of course 
because the stage representation of it would 
destroy the effect of the death-scene of the 
king, and also in order to eliminate the violent 
religious element, and to avoid an extreme 
degradation of the king's person. These are 
the chief differences in dramatic presentation 
between the Troublesome Raigne and Shakes- 
peare's King John. The element of solilo- 
quy in Shakespeare's play, so useful in reveal- 
ing Faulconbridge to us, is throughout, as in 
the first scene, his own addition. Now these 
changes, as has been said, are made not only 
at the dictate of a higher refinement than that 
of the unknown earlier author, not only to ex- 



$6 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

press the genius of a greater poet, but, first 
and last, to fulfill the conditions of distinctively 
dramatic art. In the earlier play the groups 
of which Arthur, Philip and John are the cen- 
tres, are more or less separate and indepen- 
dent ; the currents of events in which they are 
actors move along side by side, but join rarely 
save in mere external contact. In Shake- 
speare the destinies of the principal characters 
are so interwoven that the play would fall in 
pieces if one of them were taken out. Shake- 
speare's original is a mosaic, his own play an 
organic structure. So too in the matter of 
stage effect we have glanced at Shakespeare's 
superiority, his economy of material, his use 
of the principle of contrast, his skill in com- 
pact construction, his restraint in subordinating 
minor effects to dramatic climaxes. 1 

Helped, perhaps, by this comparison, we 
may briefly consider the dramatic purpose and 
movement of Shakespeare's play alone. The 

1 The suggestive paper on " Shakespeare as an 
Adapter " by Mr. Edward Rose, in Macmillan for No- 
vember, 1878, came to my knowledge too late to be of 
service in writing this essay. 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 57 

opening scene sets before us the ground of the 
war with France, John's usurpation, on which, 
for the first part of the play, depends the dra- 
matic movement. 

" The borrowed majesty of England here." 1 

says Chatillon, and Elinor, left alone with 
John, says to him : — 

" Your strong possession much more than your right, 
Or else it must go wrong with you and me : 
So much my conscience whispers in your ear, 
Which none but heaven and you and I shall hear." 2 

The action of the play proceeds, " to rebuke," 

as Lewis says to Arthur, 

" the usurpation 
Of thy unnatural uncle, English John." 3 

The supporters of Arthur's claim have an ab- 
solute belief in his right to the throne : — 

" We '11 lay before this town our royal bones, 
Wade to the market-place in Frenchmen's blood, 
But we will make it subject to this boy." 4 

This is the French King's resolve, and when 
John approaches he meets him with : — 

1 Act I. Sc. i. 4. 2 Act I. Sc. i. 40. 

8 Act II. Sc. i. 9. * Act II. Sc. i. 41. 



58 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

" But thou from loving England art so far, 
That thou hast under-wrought his lawful king, 
Cut off the sequence of posterity. 

That Geffrey was thy elder brother born, 
And this his son ; England was Geffrey's right, 
And this is Geffrey's." 1 

It is worthy of remark that John nowhere de- 
nies his usurpation, but seeks to outface his 
accusers with bold words : — 

" From whom hast thou this great commission, France, 

To draw my answer from thy articles ? " 2 
" Doth not the crown of England prove the King ? " 3 

But he is very glad to escape the necessity of 
fighting for his crown, and he accedes with 
alacrity to the marriage of Blanche to Lewis 
and the dowry of Anjou, Touraine, Maine and 
Poictiers. It is the clear-sighted Faulcon- 
bridge who recognizes the falseness and injus- 
tice of this compact in his soliloquy, — 

" Mad world ! mad kings ! mad composition ! " 4 

John now defies Pandulph and is excom- 
municated. At this point the two lines of dra- 
matic action represented here by Pandulph 

1 Act II. Sc. i. 94 seq. 2 Act II. Sc. i. no. 

3 Act II. Sc. i. 273. * Act II. Sc. i. 56. 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 59 

and Constance join ; Rome and France, with 
more or less insincerity and juggling on the 
part of Rome, remain for a time now allied 
against England. It is Constance who in her 
loneliness first makes common cause with Pan- 
dulph : — 

" O, lawful let it be 
That I have room with Rome to curse awhile ! 
Good father Cardinal, cry thou amen 
To my keen curses ; for without my wrong, 
There is no tongue hath power to curse him right. 
Pandulph. There's law and warrant, lady, for my 



curse. 



Const. And for mine too : when law can do no right, 
Let it be lawful that law bar no wrong : 
Law cannot give my child his kingdom here, 
For he that holds his kingdom holds the law ; 
Therefore, since law itself is perfect wrong, 
How can the law forbid my tongue to curse ? M 1 

Pandulph bids Philip of France let go John's 
hand, 

" And raise the power of France upon his head, 
Unless he do submit himself to Rome." 2 

France is perplexed and seeks to find a mid- 
dle course ; but urged by the Dauphin on the 
1 Act III. Sc. i. 105. 2 Act IIL Sc j ig3 



60 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

one hand and Constance on the other, with 
the curse of Rome impending over him he 
yields : — 

" England, I will fall from thee." 1 

and the effect of his decision on the two par- 
ties is voiced by Constance and Elinor : — 

" Const O fair return of banish'd majesty ! 
Elinor. O foul revolt of French inconstancy ! " 2 

John has now arrayed against him France and 
Rome, France directly and Rome indirectly 
because of his usurpation. Between John and 
the undisturbed possession of the throne stands 
the person of the rightful heir. All will go 
well, it seems to John, if Arthur can be finally 
put out of the way, and as soon as the fortunes 
of war make the boy his prisoner, he takes 
steps for his disposal. The short scene in 
which the king darkly intimates to Hubert his 
wishes concerning his nephew is in certain 
ways the most wonderful in the play. The 
significance of the suspension of the verse 
while the king is striving to utter his wish, his 
monosyllabic breathings as he gains courage 
to voice it definitely, and his final gratuitous 
1 Act II. Sc. ii. 320. 2 Act III. Sc. ii. 321. 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 6 1 

lightness, — these features give to the scene a 
sombre, evil power which marks it as a rare 
height in dramatic expression. 

Arthur is sent to England in Hubert's keep- 
ing, and the dramatic prevision of his fate 
comes to us from the mouth of the wily Pan- 
dulph in a dialogue with Lewis the Dauphin : — 

" And therefore mark. 
John hath seized Arthur ; and it cannot be 
That, whiles warm life plays in that infant's veins, 
The misplaced John should entertain an hour, 
One minute, nay, one quiet breath of rest. 

That John must stand, Arthur needs must fall ; 
So be it, for it cannot be but so." 1 

And further on : — 

" O, sir, when he shall hear of your approach, 
If that young Arthur be not gone already, 
Ev'n at that news he dies : and then the hearts 
Of all his people shall revolt from him, 
And kiss the lips of unacquainted change, 
And pick strong matter of revolt and wrath 
Out of the bloody fingers' ends of John. 
Methinks, I see this hurly all on foot." 2 

In this way, by what we may call dramatic 

1 Act III. Sc. iv. 136 seq. 2 Act III. Sc. iv. 169. 



62 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

prophecy, we are prepared for the main course 
of the events that fill the rest of the play. 

The shadow of the dark cloud that wraps in 
the close of the drama soon begins to fall. 
After John's second coronation the lords re- 
quest Arthur's enfranchisement, which the 
king ostensibly grants, only to announce, soon 
afterwards, the child's supposed death. The 
lords utter their suspicions of foul play, John's 
misfortunes are increased by the death of his 
mother and the landing of the French. Hu- 
bert is sent to assure the lords that Arthur 
lives, and the prince leaps from the walls to 
give the lie to Hubert's assurance. 

To the original dramatic motive, John's 
usurpation, is now added another, the death of 
Arthur, and the combined force of the two 
hastens the play to its sad end. The last act 
of the drama is taken up with the irresistible 
rush of the current of destiny. There is no 
point at which the sweep of events could be 
stayed, there is no spot at which light breaks 
through the gloom. The act opens with John's 
final abasement in yielding himself to Pan- 
dulph. Town after town receives the French 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 63 

King, John's nobles desert him and ally them- 
selves with his enemy, Philip loses half his 
force, and the king is poisoned and dies. 
But before his death the revolted nobles have 
returned to him, and the faithful Philip is be- 
side him at the last. 

Such, then, is the outworking of the dramatic 
motive of King John in its main line of move- 
ment. With this main plot is wrought an un- 
derplot consisting of the series of actions of 
which Pandulph is the centre. The deceit 
and treachery of John to establish himself on 
the throne find an echo in the deceit and 
treachery of Pandulph to gain supremacy over 
England and France. The chief political mo- 
tive is thus emphasized by a parallel religious 
motive, the latter, it must be borne in mind, 
being always subordinate. It is interesting 
also to notice the way in which the characters 
of the play are bound together for dramatic 
effectiveness; their relations to each other and 
to the main current of the play; the inter- 
weaving of actions ; the organic connection of 
episodes. These are briefly presented below 
in the form of an analysis of the plot of King 



64 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

John based upon the canons of dramatic criti- 
cism laid down by Mr. Richard G. Moulton in 
his li Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist." Cer- 
tain of the technical terms suggested by Mr. 
Moulton have been replaced by a more famil- 
iar phraseology, in order that the analysis may 
be self-explanatory. The single term "pas- 
sion drama " may need a slight explanation. It 
is Mr. Moulton's substitute for the conventional 
term tragedy. Says the author : " The true 
distinction between the two kinds of plays is 
one of movement, not tone. . . . Thus in these 
two kinds of dramas the impression which to 
the spectator overpowers all other impressions, 
and gives individuality to the particular play, 
is this sense of intellectual or of emotional 
unity in the movement, — is, in other words, 
action-movement of passion-movement. The 
two may be united, — but one or the other 
will be predominant and will give to the play 
its unity of impression. The distinction, then, 
which the terms comedy and tragedy fail to 
mark would be accurately brought out by sub- 
stituting for them the terms action-drama and 
passion-drama." 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 65 

KING JOHN. 
A PASSION-DRAMA. 

Scheme of Actions. 

Main Nemesis Action ; Usurpation of John 
and its consequences. 

Underplot : an Intrigue Action ; Machina- 
tions of Pandulph to subdue England and 
France to Rome, parallel with machina- 
tions of John to secure firmly the English 
crown. 

Double Tragedy : Main Nemesis Action ; 
John undone by what seemed his safety. 

Tragic Action : Constance and Arthur ; Suf- 
fering and death of the innocent. 

Character Sub-action : Faulconbridge, ex- 
tending throughout the play. 

Sub-Action at Rise of Dramatic Complica- 
tion ; Lewis and Blanche. (Act II. Scene i.) 

Sub-Action at Crisis of Dramatic Compli- 
cation : Hubert and Arthur. (Act IV. 
Scene i.) 

Sub-Action during Catastrophe : Salisbury, 
Pembroke and Bigot, — their desertion 
and return. (Act IV. Scene ii. 4.) 



66 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

Enveloping Action : Wars and Treaties 
with France and Rome. 

Oracular Action : Peter of Pomfret's pro- 
phecy (Act IV. Scene ii.) enforced by- 
prodigy of five moons. (Act IV. Scene ii.) 

Ironic Elements of Action : the king's ex- 
treme precaution in commanding the death 
of Arthur and in allying himself with 
Rome proves his ruin ; Arthur's death 
comes from himself, after the revocation 
of the king's command to Hubert; the 
treachery of the revolted nobles is checked 
and they are turned again to loyalty by the 
treachery of one of their French allies, 
Melun. 

External Circumstance : Disclosure of Phil- 
ip's paternity. (Act I. Scene i.) 
Economy, 

Two chief parties, French and English, 
linked by common personages, Arthur 
and Pandulph. 

Interweaving : by episodes of Philip and 
Austria, Blanche and Lewis (Act II. 
Scene i.), English lords, Lewis and Melun, 
(Act IV. Scene ii. 4.) 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 6j 

Envelopment in common enveloping action. 

Contrast as an enforcing bond : Arthur the 

rightful king, whose life is sought, dies by 

accident ; John the usurping king, who 

endeavors to confirm his own position by 

Arthur's death, dies poisoned by a subject. 

Character contrast between John, the 

throned king, base, cowardly, and 

treacherous, and Philip, the son of 

Cceur-de-Lion, the embodiment of 

the national spirit. 

Movement. 

Passion-Movement with convergent motion. 
Turning-Points. 
Centre of Plot : Capture of Arthur (Act III. 
Scene ii.) ; John's apparent success the 
cause of his final ruin. 
Catastrophe : Culminating Nemesis, from 
Arthur's supposed death, and the an- 
nouncement of Elinor's death and of the 
preparations of the French (Act IV. Scene 
ii.), continuing through Act V. to the death 
of the king. 



68 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 



THE NATIONAL SPIRIT AS EMBOD- 
IED IN FAULCONBRIDGE. 



The search for " types " in Shakespeare is 
often misleading. It frequently involves the 
disregard of many facts of dramatic presenta- 
tion and the distortion of others. Worse than 
this, it fosters the tendency to stamp a charac- 
ter with a formula and to ignore its individu- 
ality. Nevertheless there are certain charac- 
ters whose individuality is strongly marked 
and whom at the same time it is difficult to 
escape from feeling that Shakespeare intended 
to stand as representatives or ideals of a tem- 
per and spirit that comprehends more than 
themselves. Perhaps it is reading a somewhat 
overwrought history into the drama to say 
that the historical plays contain more of these 
representatives than the other plays. It is, 
however, a commonplace of criticism that 
there runs through the series of English histor- 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 69 

ical plays, a high and enthusiastic national 
spirit, and this spirit we find occasionally 
caught up and embodied in a concrete form 
in some one character. Just this is done by 
the character of Faulconbridge in King John. 
The time of the play, as Professor Dowden 
has said, is that of "the utmost ebb in the 
national life of England." Cruelty, treachery, 
and weakness darken the scene. Subjects 
forget their allegiance, the king trifles away 
his honor. But one true-hearted Englishman 
remains near the throne, and to him turns all 
the loyalty and in him shines forth all the 
patriotism of England. 

See how English he is in what we have 
grown to regard as distinctively national traits, 
even in the faults to which some of them tend. 
He is always direct, outspoken, blunt. He 
wastes no hour in words when deeds are 
needed, and is at any time somewhat irritated 
to find himself the subject of open praise. 
When Hubert, with a mild, involuntary expres- 
sion of respect calls him " brave soldier," he 
interposes, — 



yo THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

" Come, come, sans compliment, what news abroad ? " * 
Moral ostentation he cannot away with, and 
anything approaching religious seriousness he 
turns aside with a smile and a shrug. To 
Elinor he says, — 

" Grandam, I will pray, 
If ever I remember to be holy, 
For your fair safety ; so, I kiss your hand." 

Even with his mother in the first scene he 
shows the same roughness and bluntness, 
though he spares her the brutal threats by 
which Philip in the earlier play extorts a con- 
fession from Lady Faulconbridge. 

" Madam, I was not old Sir Robert's son," 

he begins at once, but not, as has been noticed, 
until Gurney is sent away. Yet what we feel in 
his roughness is never a rude lawlessness, but 
rather an unsubdued strength. His courage 
and contempt of cowardice are constantly made 
manifest. He rouses the cowardly and sinking 
king with a shock of vigorous contempt, — 

" But if you be afeared to hear the worst, 
Then let the worst unheard fall on your head." 2 

1 Act V. Sc. vi. 16. 2 Act IV. Sc. ii. 135. 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN Ji 

His British courage first finds vent in arms, 
and he is, while the times demand soldiership, 
thoroughly a soldier. He loves fair play, and 
stands resolutely between Hubert and Salis- 
bury on the discovery of Arthur's death, though 
he afterwards treats Hubert to a torrent of in- 
dignation on his own part. When Salisbury 
draws his sword, Philip stays him : — 

" Your sword is bright, sir ; put it up again. 
Salisbury. Not till I sheathe it in a murderer's skin. 

Thou art a murderer. 

Hubert. Do not prove me so. 

Yet I am none : whose tongue so'er speaks false, 
Not truly speaks ; who speaks not truly, lies. 

Pembroke. Cut him to pieces. 

Bastard. Keep the peace, I say." i 

But after the lords go out, Philip utters this 
magnificent hyperbole of indignation : — 

" Bastard. Here 's a good world : Knew you of this 
fair work ? 
Beyond the infinite and boundless reach 
Of mercy, if thou didst this deed of death, 
Art thou damn'd, Hubert. 
Hubert. Do but hear me, sir. 

1 Act IV. Sc. iii. 79 seq. 



72 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

Bastard. Ha : I '11 tell thee what ; 

Thou 'rt damn'd as black — nay, nothing is so black ; 
Thou art more deep damn'd than Prince Lucifer : 
There is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell 
As thou shalt be, if thou didst kill this child. 

Hubert. Upon my soul — 

Bastard. If thou didst but consent 

To this most cruel act, do but despair ; 
And if thou want'st a cord, the smallest thread 
That ever spider twisted from her womb 
Will serve to strangle thee ; a rush will be a beam 
To hang thee on ; or would'st thou drown thyself, 
Put but a little water in a spoon, 
And it shall be as all the ocean, 
Enough to stifle such a villain up." 1 

Philip is at all times the man of action, 
prompt, decided, energetic. In the midst of 
his dispute with Austria the king gives an 
order for action, and Philip drops at once his 
personal quarrel, ceases for the time to be the 
son of Plantagenet, the victim of Austria, and 
becomes the son of Plantagenet, King of Eng- 
land. 

" Up higher to the plain ; where we '11 set forth 
In best appointment all our regiments," 2 

1 Act IV. Sc. iii. 116 sea. * Act II. Sc. i. 105. 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 73 

says John, and Philip is forthwith England's 
soldier : — 

" Speed, then, to take advantage of the field." 
So when the king at last in conscious weakness 
hands over his authority to Philip with the 
words, — 

" Have you the ordering of this present time," 1 
Philip accepts the trust unhesitatingly, and 
having failed to arouse and encourage the 
king to act for himself, bids him, now that the 
command is in stronger hands, — 

" Away then, with good courage." 
Philip has, too, a thoroughly English sense of 
humor. It does not consist, like the humor of 
the French, in intellectual hair-breadth es- 
capes, but is of a merrier sort, delighting in 
the general aspect of an amusing situation, 
though having at times withal a half melan- 
choly undertone. In almost his first speech 
he gives a humorous turn to his pious wish, — 

" Heaven guard my mother's honor and my land." 2 
His quick retort to Queen Elinor shows his 
ready wit. 

1 Act V. Sc i. 77. 2 Act 1. sc. i. 70. 



74 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

" Bastard. Madam, I '11 follow you unto the death. 
Elinor. Nay, I would have you go before me thither. 
Bastard. Our country manners give our betters way." * 

The bombastic citizen of Angiers affords him 

exquisite amusement. 

" Here 's a large mouth, indeed, 

That spits forth death and mountains, rocks and seas, 

Talks as familiarly of roaring lions 

As maids of thirteen do of puppy-dogs : 

What cannoneer begot this lusty blood ? 

He speaks plain cannon fire, and smoke and bounce ; 

He gives the bastinado with his tongue ; 

Our ears are cudgell'd ; not a word of his 

But buffets better than a fist of France." 2 

And Lewis's perfunctory love-speech sets him 
off into a conceit which it is a pity that Lewis 
himself cannot hear : — 

" Drawn in the flattering table of her eye ! 

Hang'd in the frowning wrinkle of her brow ! 

And quarter'd in her heart ! he doth espy 

Himself love's traitor ; this is pity now, 

That, hang'd and drawn and quartered, there should be 

In such a love so vile a lout as he." 3 

These lesser English traits, directness, courage, 
promptness, and single-heartedness in action, 

1 Act I. Sc. i. 154. 2 Act II. Sc. i. 455 sea. 

3 Act II. Sc. i. 504. 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN ?$ 

contempt of affectation, and a wholesome hu- 
mor are supplemented in Philip by the English 
national pride. Nor is there in this anything 
of the British braggadocio to which the intense 
nationalism of some of Shakespeare's contem- 
porary dramatists came dangerously near. It 
is the honest, hearty, fervent glow of that love 
for country which England has never felt in 
greater warmth than she felt it in the days of 
Elizabeth. This is the undertone in all his 
words, the ground and end of all his actions. 
His first words in the play prepare us for the 
part that we see him sustain throughout. 
" What men are you ? " 

asks the king of the brothers, and Philip re- 
plies, — 

" Your faithful subject, I," 1 

and a faithful subject he is always, even when 
his allegiance must be to the crown alone, not 
to its wearer. Elinor sees at once in him 
" some tokens " of her great son, and " the 
very spirit of Plantagenet ; " he denies himself 
a Faulconbridge " as faithfully as he denies the 

1 Act I. Sc. i. so. 



y6 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

devil ; " and when he has wrung from his mo- 
ther his father's name, he takes high pride in 
the thought that he is not the son of old Sir 
Robert, but of the great Coeur-de-lion : — 

" Ay, my mother, 
With all my heart I thank thee for my father ! "* 

In deriving his descent thus from the king 
who made great the name of England in for- 
eign lands, Philip appears at the outset as a 
fit person to embody the national spirit and to 
gather to himself the loyalty of his countrymen 
when perforce it falls away from the one to 
whom it should cling. This descent is also 
emphasized in the quarrel with Austria, when 
Philip stands as the avenger of his father's 
death. His position as a directing force in 
the play is first made manifest at the meet- 
ing of the kings before Angiers. Philip of 
France and King John made long, ineffective 
speeches ; there is much of excursions, heralds, 
trumpets ; the kings pompously assert their 
claims, but still the citizens refuse either of 
them entrance : — 

1 Act I. Sc. i. 269. 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 77 

" A greater power than we denies all this ;' 
And till it be undoubted, we do lock 
Our former scruple in our strong-barr'd gates ; 
King'd of our fears, until our fears, resolved, 
Be by some certain king purged and deposed." 1 

This passive defiance is too much for Faul- 
conbridge. Silent before, save for his slight 
passages with Austria and his one short speech 
of ready energy, — 

" Speed then, to take advantage of the field," 
he now bursts forth before either of the kings 
can invent another indecisive speech : — 

" By heaven, these scroyles of Angiers flout you kings, 
And stand securely on their battlements, 
As in a theatre, whence they gape and point 
At your industrious scenes and acts of death. 
Your royal presences be ruled by me." 2 

He then presents his plan of union between 
the kings for the reduction of the town and for 
the subsequent settling of the rival claims by 
battle, ending with, — 

" How like you this wild counsel, mighty states ? 
Smacks it not something of the policy ? " 3 

1 Act II. Sc. i. 369 seq. 2 Act IL Sc j 3?3 ^ 

3 Act II. Sc. i. 395. 



?8 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

and John, always willing to shirk a responsi- 
bility, replies at once, — 

" Now, by the sky that hangs above our heads, 
I like it well. "i 

The Bastard's plans are frustrated by the 
" mad composition " which the kings soon 
make, but by his readiness for action and the 
soundness of his counsel he has been placed 
before us as the exponent of saner loyalty, 
courage, and judgment than those of England's 
king. 

His part in the scene in which John is ex- 
communicated is slight, but a greater confi- 
dence is given to the English cause when, after 
the king has said, — 
" France, thou shalt rue this hour within this hour," 2 
Philip repeats his words with a preliminary 
play, — 

" Old Time the clock-setter, that bald sexton Time, 
Is it as he will ? well then, France shall rue." 3 

Before he goes to England on the king's 
commission to collect money for the war, 

1 Act II. Sc. i. 397. 2 Act III. Sc. i. 323. 

3 Act III. Sc. i. 324. 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 79 

Philip appears, in the short scene already re- 
ferred to, as the rescuer of Elinor. During 
his absence from John, the king performs his 
most dastardly act, and gives Hubert the com- 
mand for Arthur's death. A selfish and cow- 
ardly remorse for this deed has just seized the 
king, when a messenger announces to him the 
approach of the French power and the death 
of his mother. The weak king is for a moment 
left alone, without the imperious strength of 
his mother or the faithful support of his kins- 
man, the Bastard, and he reels in bewilder- 
ment : — 

" Thou hast made me giddy 
With these ill tidings." 1 

At this point Philip returns, strong, controlled, 
and hopeful, and the spirit of English stead- 
fastness is breathed over the scene. He gives 
the king a chance to deny his part in the sup- 
posed murder of Arthur, but the king only 
sends him, his fears of John's baseness con- 
firmed, to appease the angry noblemen : — 

1 Act IV. Sc. ii. 131. 



80 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

" I have a way to win their loves again, 
Bring them before me. 

Be Mercury, set feathers to thy heels, 

And fly like thought from them to me again." 1 

Philip's brief reply, with this confirmation of 
the king's guilt before him, is 

" The spirit of the time shall teach me speed," 

and he goes on, to do his utmost towards set- 
ting right what is wrong. When he meets the 
noblemen he guards his words from even the 
appearance of disloyalty, until the sight of Ar- 
thur's dead body forces from him the judg- 
ment : — 

" It is a damned and a bloody work ; 
The graceless action of a heavy hand," 

adding in the same breath, however,. — 

" If that it be the work of any hand." 2 

Finally, the lords having left, he utters his 
only confused or disheartened sentence, shows 
that he well understands the actual condition 
of England, and before he finishes, takes upon 
himself consciously the burdens of the time. 

1 Act IV. Sc. ii. 168. 2 Act IV. Sc. iii. 57. 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 8 1 

" Go, bear him in thine arms. 
I am amazed, methinks, and lose my way 
Among the thorns and dangers of this world. 
How easy dost thou take all England up ! 
From forth this morsel of dead royalty, 
The life, the right and truth of all this realm 
Is fled to heaven ; and England now is left 
To tug and scramble and to part by the teeth 
The unowed interest of proud-swelling state. 
Now for the bare-pick'd bone of majesty 
Doth dogged war bristle his angry crest, 
And snarleth in the gentle eyes of peace : 
Now powers from home and discontents at home 
Meet in one line ; and vast confusion waits, 
As doth a raven on a sick-fall'n beast, 
The imminent decay of wrested pomp. 
Now happy he whose cloak and centre can 
Hold out this tempest. Bear away that child 
And follow me with speed : I '11 to the King ; 
A thousand businesses are brief in hand, 
And heaven itself doth frown upon the land." * 

This is our only glimpse of an abatement of 
hopefulness on Philip's part, and even here he 
commands himself at once and we know him 
to be prepared for whatever may follow. What 
does follow is of all things the most saddening 
1 Act IV. Sc. iii. 139 seq. 



82 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

to a loyal Englishman — his king gives further 
proofs of baseness and cowardice, and reveals 
the " inglorious league " made with the Pope's 
legate. A foreign power dictates to the king 
on English soil and the king speaks of his 
humiliation as a " happy peace " — this marks 
the disappearance of the king as in any sense 
a national representative, and Faulconbridge 
from this point on becomes the sole embodi- 
ment of the national spirit. But his loyalty to 
the king as king remains unimpaired, he is 
still the " faithful subject " of the first scene of 
the play. The vigorous lines beginning 

" But wherefore do you droop ? Why look you sad ? " l 

are his last effort to raise the king to the height 
of a kingly mind and conduct. To this stir- 
ring speech, the king replies only with a decla- 
ration of the making of the peace, and Philip 
urges a last motive for action : — 

" Perchance the cardinal cannot make your peace : 
Or if he do, let it at least be said 
They saw we had a purpose of defence." 2 

The king thereupon commits to Philip " the 
1 Act V. Sc. i. 44. 2 Act v. Sc. ii. 74. 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 83 

ordering of this present time " and Philip be- 
comes the recognized leader of the English, 
himself, however, always paying reverence 
to that kingly ideal which bears sway over 
him. In the scene with Pandulph and Lewis, 
Philip's patriotism is on fire. The Roman 
legate has brought England to a depth of sub- 
mission to which France will not descend, and 
the Dauphin, on English ground, refuses to 
lay down his arms against England's twice- 
crowned king. 

•' He flatly says he '11 not lay down his arms," 1 

reports Pandulph of Lewis, and Philip flames 
forth his white-hot burst of indignant defiance : 

" By all the blood that ever fury breathed, 
The youth says well. Now hear our English King ; 
For thus his royalty doth speak in me. 
He is prepared and reason too he should : 
This apish and unmannerly approach, 
This harness'd mask and unadvised revel, 
This unhair'd sauciness and boyish troops, 
The King doth smile at ; and is well prepared 
To whip this dwarfish war, these pigmy arms, 
From out the circle of his territories." 2 

1 Act V. Sc. ii. 126. 2 Act V. Sc. ii. 127. 



84 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

More in the same vein follows and Philip 

closes his message with this : — 

" For at hand, 
Not trusting to this halting legate here, 
Whom he hath used rather for sport than need, 
Is warlike John ; and in his forehead sits 
A bare-ribb'd death, whose office is this day 
To feast upon whole thousands of the French." x 

Notice that throughout these speeches Philip, 
though intrusted with the fortunes of the time, 
assumes for himself nothing : he is the king's 
messenger, — "lam sent to speak," " from the 
king I come," he says ; and he brings forward 
the king as the emblem of a power and temper 
which now in the eyes of foes and friends re- 
side in him alone, — " Now hear our English 
King," " at hand is warlike John." Here too 
he is still the "faithful subject." 

Finally near Swinstead Abbey Philip meets 
Hubert and learns from him of the king's poi- 
soning. Half of his own power has been mean- 
while " devoured by the unexpected flood " in 
Lincoln Washes, the day begins to look despe- 
rate, and his one eager wish is to be conducted 

1 Act V. Sc. ii. 174. 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 85 

to the king ; here he must relate his disasters 
and offer the support of his presence and coun- 
sel. He reaches the king "scalded with the 
violent motion " of his haste, and begins to tell 
his story, but while he is speaking John dies. 

Philip first gives utterance to his loyalty to 
the king : — ■ 

" Art thou gone so ? I do but stay behind 
To do the office for thee of revenge, 
And then my soul shall wait on thee to heaven, 
As it on earth hath been thy servant still." * 

Then he comes back to the thought of his 
country, of which the king has been to him the 
visible symbol, and calls upon the stars to 

" return with me again 
To push destruction and perpetual shame 
Out of the weak door of our fainting land." 2 

But the cardinal has at last reduced the 
Dauphin to subjection and the preparations 
for war are given over. King John's burial is 
arranged for, and Philip tenders his allegiance 
to the new king : — 

" And happily may your sweet self put on 
The lineal state and glory of the land ! 

1 Act V. Sc. vii. 70. 2 Act V. Sc. vii. 77. 



86 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

To whom, with all submission, on my knee 
I do bequeath my faithful services 
And true subjection everlastingly." 1 

With this his part in the play ends. He has 
revealed himself throughout as the representa- 
tive of the distinctively English traits of char- 
acter and habits of mind. He has held on 
high, when in other hands it has been extin- 
guished, the torch of a glowing patriotism. 
He has drawn to himself the feelings of na- 
tional loyalty and pride which, on his own 
part, he always directs towards the sacred 
ideal of the kingly office embodied for him in 
the unworthy John. Shakespeare has else- 
where, in the person of Henry V., drawn for 
us the man whom he would have us receive as 
the typical English King, "the hero and cen- 
tral figure of the historical plays ; " but the at- 
mosphere of royalty about him removes him 
somewhat from the sphere of other English- 
men. In Philip the Bastard, however, the na- 
tional spirit is presented still more forcibly in 
one below the throne. Son though he is to 
Cceur-de-lion, royalty has no allurements for 

1 Act V. Sc. vii. 101. 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 87 

him ; as he enters, the " faithful subject " of 
King John, so, having borne on his own shoul- 
ders the burdens of John's reign, he leaves, be- 
queathing to John's son his "faithful services 
and true subjection everlastingly." It is fit- 
ting that from his strong English heart should 
come the superb nationalism of the close of 
the play : — 

" This England never did, nor never shall, 
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, 
But when it first did help to wound itself. 
Now these her princes are come home again, 
Come the three corners of the world in arms, 
And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue, 
If England to itself do rest but true." l 

1 Act V. Sc. vii. 112. 



88 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 



A COMPARISON OF THE TROUBLE- 
SOME RAIGNE OF JOHN, KING 
OF ENGLAND, AND SHAKE- 
SPEARE'S KING JOHN, 

AS EXHIBITING THE SHAKESPEARIAN NON- 
PARTISAN SPIRIT. 



In the first part of this essay a brief compar- 
ison was made between the dramatic workman- 
ship of Shakespeare and that of the author of 
the Troublesome Raigne of King John. A 
comparison of the spirit of the two writers is 
of still more interest, as explaining in great 
measure their differences in artistic excellence. 
The contrast between them is exhibited most 
markedly in their respective attitudes toward 
Romanism, and it is, therefore, to their treat- 
ment of the religious element in the plays that 
we look for evidence of their breadth and jus- 
tice of spirit. 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 89 

This contrast is first expressed in their gen- 
eral plan of dramatic construction. Though 
the old play can hardly be said in strictness to 
have an informing purpose, yet as has been 
pointed out, its pervading spirit is that of anti- 
Romanism. It seems to have been written 
largely as a dramatic exhibition of the English 
hatred of Rome, and it is certainly a forcible 
expression of the passion of religious bigotry. 
We may notice a few of the dramatic mile- 
stones, especially in their bearing upon the re- 
ligious spirit of the play. The opening scenes 
of the old play are of a somewhat heterogene- 
ous character, war, inconstancy, revenge, and 
gallantry succeeding each to each ; but the 
predominant tone is at the outset political, in 
a "swashing and a martial" fashion. With 
the entrance of the " Cardynall from Rome," * 
however, begins the true life of the play. Here 
we have King John and the Cardinal speaking 
"plain cannon fire, and smoke, and bounce," 
each giving the other " the bastinado with his 
tongue " in unstinting measure. We are made 
at once to feel that, whatever the relative im- 
1 Page 254. 



go THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

portance of the other issues of the play, the 
contest between king and cardinal is of su- 
preme moment. The French king ranges 
himself unhesitatingly on the side of Rome, 
and all powers obnoxious to England are forth- 
with barred off in a common compartment for 
convenience of odium. 

" Brother of Fraunce, what say you to the Cardinall ? " 

asks John, and France answers, — 

" I say, I am sorrie for your majestie, requesting you 
to submit your selfe to the Church of Rome." 

John proceeds, — 

" And what say you to our league, if I do not submit ? " 

to which the king's prompt reply is, — 

" What should I say ? I must obey the Pope." 1 

And after John and his train have left the 
scene, France assures Pandulph of his devo- 
tion to Rome with the words, — 

" Pandulph, thy selfe shalt see, 
How Fraunce will fight for Rome and Romish rytes." 2 

The contrast of the old writer with Shake- 

i Page 256. 2 Page 256. 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 91 

speare in these scenes has already been implied. 
Shakespeare makes the primary national inter- 
est of the drama unmistakable from the begin- 
ning. Faulconbridge, the central character, is 
identified with the patriotic current ; the meet- 
ing before Angiers presents in brief the prob- 
lems of the play ; and the entrance of Pan- 
dulph we feel to be an intrusion, of great and 
ominous significance indeed, but an intrusion, 
and not the first appearance of one of the two 
great forces of the play. 

The hesitation of the French king to break 
his oath and ally himself with Rome is also 
in sharp contrast to his ready and unquestion- 
ing adherence in the Troublesome Raigne. 
" I am perplexed and know not what to say," 1 

he says, and after a clear statement of the in- 
justice of the proposed compromise and alli- 
ance he adds, — 

" O holy sir, 
My reverend father, let it not be so ! 
Out of your grace, devise, ordain, impose 
Some gentle order ; and then we shall be blest 
To do your pleasure and continue friends." 2 
1 Act III. Sc. i. 221. 2 Act IIL Sc> 1 24 s. 



92 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

It is only after much persuasion that he yields 
and falls from England. 

The single portion of the drama wherein the 
two playwrights differ most obviously and 
markedly is, of course, the priory scene with 
its related circumstances. In Shakespeare's 
play the king's command to Faulconbridge is 
this : — 

" Cousin, away for England ! haste before ; 
And ere our coming, see thou shake the bags 
Of hoarding abbots. Set at liberty 
Imprison'd angels ; the fat ribs of peace 
Must by the hungry now be fed upon. 
Use our commission in his utmost force." x 

And Philip makes a brief reply, mocking, and, 
as often, misrepresenting himself : — 

" Bell, book and candle shall not drive me back, 
When gold and silver becks me to come on." 2 

Hear now the king of the earlier play. At 
the beginning of hostilities he declares : — 
" He ceaze the lasie Abbey lubbers lands 

Into my hands to pay my men of warre. 

The Pope and Popelings shall not grease themselves 

With gold and groates, that are the soldiers due." 

1 Act III. Sc. hi. 6. 2 Act III. Sc. iii. 12. 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 93 

And he gives his commission to Philip in these 
words : — 

" But leauing this we will to England now, 
And take some order with our Popelings there, 
That swell with pride and fat of lay mens lands 
Philip, I make thee chiefe in this affaire, 
Ransack the Abbeys, Cloysters, Priories, 
Conuert their coyne unto my soldiers use : 
And whatsoere he be within my land, 
That goes to Rome for justice and for law. 
While he may haue his right within the Realme, 
Let him be judged a traitor to the State 
And suffer as an enemie to England." 1 

Philip's reply here is : — 

" Now warres are done, I long to be at home, 

To dive into the Monks and Abbots bags 

To make some sport among the smooth skin nunnes 

And keepe some reuell with the fanzen Friers." 2 

In the dialogue between Pandulph and Lewis, 
Shakespeare again reminds us that 

" The bastard Faulconbridge 
Is now in England, ransacking the church, 
Offending charity." 3 

1 Page 259. 

2 Page 260. s Act in Sc iv# r7I 



94 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

But of the results of his commission we have 
only the two lines quoted above. 

" How I have sped among the clergymen, 
The sums I have collected shall express." l 

The Troublesome Raigne, however, gives a 
long and disgusting scene as a specimen of the 
process of collecting these sums. Philip en- 
ters, "leading a Frier, charging him show where 
the Abbots golde lay." 

Philip. Come on you fat Franciscan, dallie no longer, 

but show me where the Abbots treasure lyes, or die. 
Frier. Benedicamus Domini, was euer such an in j li- 
ne? 

Sweete S. Withold of thy lenitie, defend us from ex- 
tremitie, 

And heare us for S. Charitie, oppressed with austeritie 

In nomine Domini, make I my homilie, 

Gentle gentilitie grieue not the cleargie. 
Philip. Gray-gownd good face, conjure ye, nere trust 
me for agroate 

If this waste girdle hang thee not that girdeth in thy 
coate. 

Now bald and barefoote Bungie birds, when up the gal- 
lowes climing, 

Say Philip he had words inough, to put you down with 
ryming." 2 

1 Act IV. Sc. ii. 141. 2 Page 262. 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 95 

The friar begs for mercy, and Philip grants 
it when the promise of conduct to the prior's 
chest is made him. The friar warrants the 
chest to hold " a thousand pound in silver and 
in gold," but when the coffer is opened it is 
found to contain not silver and gold, but 
" faire Alice the Nun." Philip comments on 
the discovery in very execrable verse, and 
agrees to accept, as ransom for fair Alice, the 
hoard of an ancient Nun. Again, however, he 
finds not treasure, but Friar Lawrence, a fact 
which forces from him more bad verse and 
worse sentiments, and he leaves, after giving 
the order to bind the offenders and "haste 
them to execution." 

In the following scene a side touch is given 
in the remark of Peter the prophet, here repre- 
sented as a " dissembling knaue " of the for- 
tune-telling type : " I must dispatch some busi- 
ness with a Frier, and then He read your 
fortunes." x 

And further on, when Philip makes report 
to the king, John in delight at Philip's intima- 
tion, — 

1 Page 266. 



96 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

" I doubt not when your Highness sees my prize, 
You may proportion all their former pride," — 

says, — 

" Why so, now sorts it Philip as it should : 
This small intrusion into Abbey trunkes, 
Will make the Popelings excommunicate, 
Curse, ban, and breath out damned orisons, 
As thick as hailestones fore the spring's approach : 
But yet as harmless and without effect, 
As is the echo of a cannons crack 
Discharged against the battlements of heaven." l 

But Shakespeare introduces Peter of Pomfret, 
in a short passage in which Philip is made to 
declare of him to the king, — 

" he sung, in rude harsh-sounding rhymes 
That, ere the next Ascension day at noon, 
Your highness should deliver up your crown." 2 

Peter is sent to prison, with the king's com- 
mand for his hanging at noon of the day men- 
tioned, and the apparition of the five moons is 
announced later by Hubert, neither prophecy 
nor prodigy being made of ecclesiastical im- 
port. In Shakespeare's original, however, the 
apparition of the moons is presented on the 

1 Page 273. 2 Act IV. Sc. ii. 150. 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 97 

stage, and Peter is summoned from the pres- 
ence door, where he has been left by Philip, 
to interpret the omen for the king. He fulfills 
the command in this manner : — 

" The skies wherein these moones have residence, 
Presenteth Rome the great Metropolis, 
Where sits the Pope in all his holy pompe. 
Foure of the Moones present four provinces, 
To wit, Spaine, Denmarke, Germaine, and France, 
That bear the yoke of proud commanding Rome, 
And stand in feare to tempt the Prelates curse. 
The smallest moone that whirles aboute the rest, 
Impatient of the place he holds with them, 
Doth figure foorth this Island albion, 
Who gins to scorne the See and State of Rome, 
And seekes to shun the edicts of the Pope." 1 

And further on, "by some other knowledge 
that he has," " by his prescience," Peter fore- 
tells the dispossession of the king on Ascension 
Day. 

After Arthur's death and Philip's announce- 
ment of the election of Lewis by the nobles, 
John, in the old play, finds himself " a mad 
man," his " hart mazd," his " senses all fore- 
done " and Philip, before going to plead with 
1 Page 276. 



98 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

i:he nobles, reflects upon the cause of his mis- 
haps : — 

" I goe, my lord : see how he is distraught, 
This is the cursed Priest of Italy 
Hath heapt these mischiefes on this hapless land." 1 

John left alone, revolves the course of action 
he will adopt with the cardinal when he ap- 
pears : — 

" The Pope of Rome, 't is he that is the cause, 
He curseth thee, he sets thy subjects free 
From due obedience to their Soveraigne : 
He animates the Nobles in their warres, 
He gives away the Crowne to Philip's sonne, 
And pardons all that seeks to murther him : 
And thus blind zeale is still predominant. 
Then John there is no way to keepe thy Crowne, 
But finely to dissemble with the Pope : 

Thy sinnes are farre too great to be the man 

T' abolish Pope and Poperie from thy Realme." 2 

And he dissembles, alternately crouching to 
the legate and defying him under his breath. 

" For Priests and Women must be flattered." 3 

But when the news of the approach of the 

1 Page 291. 2 Page 291. 3 Page 292. 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 99 

French fleet is brought to him, he becomes 
" reconciled unto the church " and meekly ac- 
cepts the " sound aduise " of Pandulph. 

Shakespeare, on the other hand, avoids em- 
phasizing the religious element by opening the 
fifth act just as the king submits to the cardi- 
nal : — 

" Thus have I yielded up into your hand 
The circle of my glory." 1 

And throughout the remainder of the play 
Shakespeare's John finds only a " happy 
peace " in this degradation. But the king in 
the old play takes occasion to revile himself 
for his concession : — 

" The Deuil take the Pope, the Peeres and Fraunce : 
Shame be my share for yeelding to the Priest." 2 

Next after the priory-scene the death-scene 
of the king exhibits most sharply the contrast 
between the spirit of the two authors as it is 
manifested in their treatment of the religious 
element of the play. In the old play the mo- 
tive of this scene is still anti-Romanism. 
Much is made of the preparations of the monks 
1 Act V Sc. i. 1. 2 Page 305. 



100 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

for poisoning the king. When John reaches 
S win stead and the abbot has assured him of 
such welcome as the Abbey can afford, Philip, 
mindful of the king's sickness, says, — 

" The King thou seest is weake and very fainte, 
What victuals hast thou to refresh his Grace ? " 

The abbot answers, — 
"Good store, my Lord, of that you neede not feare, 
For Lincolnshire, and these our Abbey grounds 
Were neuer fatter, nor in better plight." 

Whereupon John recovers sufficiently from his 
weakness and faintness to address Philip in 
this manner : — 

" Philip, thou neuer needst to doubt of cates, 
Nor King nor Lord is seated halfe so well, 
As are the Abbies throughout all the land, 
If any plot of ground do passe another, 
The Friers fasten on it straight : 
But let us in to taste of their repast, 
It goes against my heart to feed with them 
Or be beholden to such Abbey groomes." 1 

All the characters but one monk now leave, 
and the monk soliloquizes : — 

" Is this the king that neuer lov'd a Frier ? 
1 Page 309. 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 101 

Is this the man that doth contemne the Pope ? 

Is this the man that robd the holy Church, 

And yet will flye into a Friory ? 

Is this the King that aymes at Abbeys Lands ? 

Is this the man whom all the world abhorres, 

And yet will flie into a Friorie ? 

Accurst be Swinstead Abbey, Abbot, Friers, 

Monks, Nuns, and Clarks, and all that dwell therein, 

If wicked John escape aliue away. 

Now if that thou wilt look to merit heaven, 

And be canonized for a holy Saint : 

To please the world with a deserving worke, 

Be thou the man to set thy countrey free, 

And murder him that seeks to murder thee." 1 

The abbot enters, and the monk breaks to him 
his purpose. 

" What if I say to strangle him in his sleepe ? " 
The abbot, fearing that the monk is mad and 
means to murder him, begs for his life, or, if 
that cannot be spared, for time to say his 
prayers. He is speedily reassured by the 
monk, to whom he then listens. 

" Wilt thou not hurt me, holy Monke ? say on. 
Monk. You know, my Lord, the king is in our house. 
Abbot. True. 

1 Pages 309, 310. 



102 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

Monk. You know likewise the King abhors a Frier. 

Abbot. True. 

Monk. And he that loves not a Frier is our enemy. 

Abbot. Thou saist true. 

Monk. Then the King is our enemy. 

Abbot. True. 

Monk. Why then should we not kill our enemy, and 
the King being our enemy, why then should we not kill 
the king. 

Abbot. O blessed Monke ! I see God moues thy 
minde to free this land from tyrants slauery. But who 
dares venter for to do this deede ? 

Monk. Who dare ? why I my Lord dare do the deede, 
He free my Country and the Church from foes, 
And merit heauen by killing of a King." 1 

The monk is absolved by the abbot, " for why 
the deede is meritorious," and he goes about 
his work. The scene of the poisoning con- 
tains much detail, from the entrance of " two 
Friers laying a cloth " to the king's wretched 
death. When the king declares that he is 
poisoned, Philip breaks out in a fury, and fells 
the abbot : — 

" This Abbot hath an interest in this act. 
At all adventures take thou that from me. 

1 Pages 311, 312. 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 1 03 

There lye the Abbot, Abbey, Lubber, Diuill. 
March with the Monke unto the gates of hell." 1 

John's last words are a prophecy of evil to 
Rome : — 

" My tongue doth falter : Philip I tell thee man : 

Since John did yeeld unto the Priest of Rome, 

Nor he nor his haue prospered on the earth : 

Curst are his blessings, and his curse is blisse 

But in the spirit I cry unto my God, 

As did the Kingly Prophet David cry, 

(Whose hands, as mine, with murder were attaint) 

I am not he shall build the Lord a house, 

Or roote these locusts from the face of the earth : 

But if my dying heart deceive me not, 

From out these loynes shall spring a Kingly braunch 

Whose arms shall reach unto the gates of Rome, 

And with his feete treads down the Strumpets pride, 

That sits upon the chaire of Babylon." 2 

Young Henry soon enters, saying, — 

" O let me see my father ere he dye : 
O Uncle, were you here, and suffered him 
To be thus poysoned by a damned Monk ? " 3 

And after his father's death his appeal to 
Philip is, — 

1 Page 315. 2 Page 316. « Page 317. 



104 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

" Sweete Uncle, if thou loue thy Soveraigne, 
Let not a stone of Swinstead Abbey stand, 
But pull the house about the Friers ears, 
For they haue killde my Father and my King." 

Thus the close of the play is animated by 
the same spirit of fierce hatred to Rome that 
is displayed in all the earlier scenes. Contrast 
now the utterly different spirit of the close of 
Shakespeare's play. The poisoning scene is 
omitted entirely, and in its place we have but 
these lines, spoken by Hubert to Philip : — 

" The King, I fear, is poison'd by a monk, 
I left him speechless, and broke out 
To acquaint you with this evil, that you might 
The better arm you to the sudden time, 
Than if you had at leisure known of this. 

Bastard. How did he take it ? who did taste to him ? 

Hubert. A monk, I tell you : a resolved villain, 
Whose bowels suddenly burst out : the King 
Yet speaks, and peradventure, may recover." l 

There is here none of the detail of the plotting 
of the monks, and later there is no final male- 
diction by the king, no appeal for revenge 
from the young prince. All partisan tones are 



i Act V. Sc. 



23- 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 105 

suppressed, and in their place sounds the dig- 
nity of a strong patriotism. 

We have seen, then, at different stages in 
the progress of the drama, how entirely op- 
posed is the spirit of one writer to that of the 
other. At the dramatic crisis of the older play 
it is the spirit of anti-Romanism that shapes 
the course of events ; in Shakespeare's play 
the religious element is never more than an 
undercurrent, a secondary agency in determin- 
ing the dramatic progress ; and when it does 
enter into the play it is introduced as any other 
modifying factor, not with the shrill bitterness 
which always attends it in the earlier drama. 

Further, the Troublesome Raigne has several 
distinct characters representing different as- 
pects of the Romish monster : Shakespeare's 
play has neither monk, abbot, friar, nor nun ; 
the cardinal legate is here the sole representa- 
tive of Rome. The contrast between the car- 
dinals of the two plays, moreover, gives addi- 
tional emphasis to the different attitudes of the 
writers. The cardinal of the Troublesome 
Raigne is a galvanized creature, responding at 
a touch with the perfunctory words of his 



106 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

office. He walks stiffly through the play, utter- 
ing his pious formulae, banning or blessing, as 
the occasion demands. He is always mindful 
of the dignity of his red hat. At his first ap- 
pearance he makes long speeches that sound 
like the tedious utterances of a legal docu- 
ment. Later, when the French king speaks 
of Austria, just dead, the cardinal is ready 
with his familiar form of words : — 

u His soule is safe and free from Purgatorie, 
Our holy Father hath dispensed his sinnes, 
The blessed Saints haue heard our Orisons, 
And all are Mediators for his soule." x 

He answers the summons of the king, and 
when the latter has servilely submitted himself 
to him, he says, — 

" No, John, thy crouching and dissembling thus 
Cannot deceiue the Legate of the Pope." 2 

But upon John's further protestation he pro- 
fesses to see the king's hearty penitence, and 
comforts him with the assurance that, let him 

" But yet be reconcil'd unto the church, 
And nothing shall be grieuous to thy state." 3 

1 Page 260. 2 Page 292. 3 Page 293. 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN \0J 

So again at the refusal of France to make 
peace with England, he draws himself up to 
say, — 

" Then in the name of Innocent the Pope, 
I curse the Prince and all that take his part, 
And excommunicate the rebell peeres 
As traytors to the King and to the Pope." * 

And finally at John's death-scene he comes 
forward in a professional manner, and, having 
exhorted the king to forgive the revolted lords, 
addresses him : — 

" K. John, farewell : in token of thy faith, 
And signe thou dyest the servant of the Lord, 
Lift up thy hand." 

Here as always it is the cardinal who speaks, 
not the man. There is nothing human about 
him, nothing interesting. He is the wearer of 
the dress of the Church, the automatic speaker 
of the Church's words, a lay figure merely, to 
serve as a target for the hate of other person- 
ages in the play. And this hate he does not 
fail to call forth at their first meeting. John 
says to him : — 

1 Page 304. 



108 THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

" And what hast thou or the Pope thy maister to doo 
to demand of me, how I employ mine own ? — Tell thy 
maister so from me, and say, John of England said it, 
that neuer an Italian Priest of them all, shal either 
haue tythe, tole, or polling penie out of England : but 
as I am King, so will I raigne next under God, supreame 
head both ouer spiritual and temprall : and he that con- 
tradicts me in this, He make him hoppe headlesse." 1 

And after his excommunication he is hotly de- 
fiant : — 

" So sir, the more the Fox is curst the better a fares : 
if God blesse me and my Land, let the Pope and his 
shauelings curse and spare not." 2 

Shakespeare's cardinal, however, is much 
more than a portrait of a dignitary of the 
Church. He is the keen, clear-sighted ecclesi- 
astical politician, used to " look quite through 
the deeds of men," and to manipulate princes 
and potentates to the Church's advantage. v , 
He understands when to command, as with 
Philip of France, 8 when to reason and per- 
suade, as with the Dauphin. 4 His life is a 
life of plot and intrigue. He says to Lewis, — 
" How green you are, and fresh in this old world ! " 5 
1 Page 255. 2 p age 255< 3 Act m . Sc. i. 
4 Act. III. Sc. iv. 5 Act III. Sc. iv. 145. 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 109 

And we feel that he himself is " in this old 
world " most thoroughly seasoned. It is to 
him in Shakespeare also that the most violent 
partisan speeches of the play are made, but 
the figures of Friar Lawrence and Friar Fran- 
cis interfere to prevent us from regarding Pan- 
dulph as Shakespeare's embodiment of Ro- 
manism. And even these partisan speeches 
have nothing of the ring of the corresponding 
speeches of the old play. After the legate's 
opening question, the king replies : — 

" What earthy name to interrogatories 

Can task the free breath of a sacred king ? 

Thou canst not, cardinal, devise a name 

So slight, unworthy and ridiculous, 

To charge me to an answer, as the pope. 

Tell him this tale ; and from the mouth of England 

Add thus much more, that no Italian priest 

Shall tithe or toll in our dominions ; 

But as we, under heaven, are supreme head, 

So under Him that great supremacy, 

Where we do reign, we will alone uphold, 

Without the assistance of a mortal hand : 

So tell the pope, all reverence set apart 

To him and his usurp'd authority." * 

1 Act III. Sc. i. 147. 



IIO THE DRAMATIC ACTION AND 

The contrast between this and the earlier 
" and he that contradicts me in this, He make 
him hoppe headlesse," needs no comment. 
France now ventures a slight expostulation, to 
which John returns : — 

" Though you and all the kings of Christendom 
Are led so grossly by this meddling priest, 
Dreading the curse that money may buy out ; 
And by the merit of vile gold, dross, dust, 
Purchase corrupted pardon of a man 
Who in that sale sells pardon for himself, 
Though you and all the rest so grossly led 
This juggling witchcraft with revenue cherish 
Yet I alone, alone do me oppose 
Against the pope, and count his friends my foes." 1 

These, together with Hubert's reference to the 
" resolved villain," are the most vehement out- 
bursts against Romanism that Shakespeare's 
play contains. And the defiance to the Pope 
voiced in these speeches and elsewhere is 
simply defiance to a foreign power, not to an 
ecclesiastical system as such, — to this the 
whole current of the play bears witness. No 
part of Philip's speech in Act IV., Scene ii., — 
1 Act III. Sc. i. 162. 



MOTIVE OF KING JOHN III 

" By all the blood that ever fury breath'd," etc., 
is directed against Rome, though Pandulph 
has just failed in his embassy of peace ; nor 
do we anywhere find a subordination of the 
patriotic interest to the ecclesiastical. 

The extortions of the friars, their avaricious- 
ness, inactivity, gluttony, and sensuality, and 
the rapacity and tyranny of the Pope, — these 
are the features of Romanism beyond which 
the author of the Troublesome Raigne cannot 
see. He never loses a chance to thrust at the 
officers and customs of the Church, and many 
of his thrusts take the form of the childish 
spitefulness of calling names, — " lazie Abbey 
lubbers," "fat Franciscan," "gray-gownd good 
face," which lowers the dignity of the anti- 
Romish party and helps to vulgarize the whole 
play. 

In the early play, too, the spirit of anti- 
Roman partisanship is faintly echoed by an 
insularity of self-glorification which takes the 
places of the patriotic nationalism of Shake- 
speare's play. The traditional feud between 
Frenchmen and Englishmen flashes out in oc- 
casional comparisons that reveal the partisan- 



112 MOTIVE OF KING JOHN 

ship of nationality, as the main current of the 
play reveals the partisanship of religion. 

Shakespeare, however, is great enough to 
see the essential truth' underlying local abuses. 
He has entirely eliminated the partisan spirit 
from this play, and given it instead as an 
enveloping motive "a firm manly national 
sentiment to which all may respond." His 
artistic restraint grows out of his true catho- 
licity in all things. It is because he is the 
symmetrical man whom we know that he can 
be the great artist whom we are beginning to 
recognize. 



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